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THE  CHRIST  FROM 
WITHOUT  AND  WITHIN 


THE  CHRIST  FROM 
WITHOUT  AND  WITHIN 

A  STUDY  OF  THE  GOSPEL  BY  ST.  JOHN 


BY  THE 

Rev.  henry  W.  CLARK 

AUTHOR  OF  "meanings  AND  METHODS  OF  THE  SPIRITUAL  LIFE " 

SECOND  EDITION 


FLEMING  H.  REVELL  COMPANY 
NEW  YORK  CHICAGO  TORONTO 
1908 


r 

V 


PREFATORY  NOTE 


nr^HE  object  of  this  book  is  to  show  how  the 
A  various  impressions  made  by  successive 
sections  of  John's  Gospel  coalesce  at  last  into 
one  unified  impression — are,  as  it  were,  various 
roads  to  a  common  centre  for  the  traveller  who 
is  willing  to  be  led. 

The  tone  passes  often  into  one  of  persuasion 
and  appeal.  There  needs  no  apology  for  this ; 
for  John  himself  had  a  purpose  of  appeal  in 
every  word  he  wrote.  And  an  intellectual 
examination  of  the  Gospel — if  properly  carried 
out — must  lead  to  a  spiritual  decision  either  for 
or  against  the  spiritual  claim  it  makes. 

Woking,  March  1904. 


CONTENTS 


CHAP.  PAGE 

I.  The  Purpose  and  Method  of  the  Gospel     .  i 

II.  Christ  seen  as  fulfilling  the  Eternal  Inten- 
tion :  The  Word  made  Flesh.    (John  i.  1-18.)  15 

III.  Christ  Foreseen  :  John  the  Baptist.    (John  i. 

19-34.)  36 

IV.  Christ    seen   in   Contact   with  Differing 

Human  Types  :  The  First  Callings.    (John  i. 
35-51.)  46 

V,  Christ  seen  as  Supreme  over  Nature  :  The 

Earliest  Miracle.    (John  ii.  i-ii.)     .         .  57 

VI.  Christ  SEEN  as  Authoritative:  The  Cleansing 

OF  THE  Temple.    (John  ii.  13-17.)        .         .  66 

VII.  Christ  seen  as  Preacher  of  the  New  Birth  : 

Nicodemus.    (John  ii.  23-iii.  21.) .  .         .  75 

VIII.  Christ  seen  rousing  Self-Knowledge  :  The 

Samaritan  Woman.    (John  iv.  1-38.)    .         .  99 

IX.  Christ  seen  calling  for  a  Spiritual  Trust: 
The  Nobleman  and  his  Faith.  (John  iv. 
43-54.)  109 

X.  The  Voice  of  Christ's  Consciousness:  '*Life 

in  Himself."   (John  v.)  .  .  .  .118 


viii 


CONTENTS 


CHAP.  PAGE 

XI.  The  Voice  of  Christ's  Consciousness  :  "  The 

Bread  of  Life."   (Johnvi.)    .         .  .130 

XII.  The  Voice  of  Christ's  Consciousness:  Liv- 
ing Water."   (Johnvii.)         .         .  .143 

XIII.  The  Voice  of  Christ's  Consciousness:  **The 

Light  of  the  World."    (John  viii.,  ix.)       .  154 

XIV.  The  Voice  of  Christ's  Consciousness:  "The 

Good  Shepherd."   (John  x.  1-18.)     .         .  172 

XV.  Christ  seen  under  the  Shadow  of  Death, 

(John  xi.,  xii.)      .....  182 

XVI.  Christ  seen  as  Concealing  and  Revealing 
Himself:  The  Beginning  of  the  End. 
(Johnxiii.)  .  .  .  .  .196 

XVII.  Christ   seen   in  the  Upper  Room.  (John 

xiv.-xvii.).  .....  205 

XVIII.  Christ  seen  at  the  End  and  at  the  New 

Beginning.    (John  xviii.-xxi.)  ,         .  .215 


THE  CHRIST  FROM 
WITHOUT  AND  WITHIN 

— * — 
I. 

THE  PURPOSE  AND  METHOD  OF 
THE  GOSPEL. 

IF  John's  Gospel  is  to  be  rightly  understood, 
and  the  success  rightly  estimated  with 
which  it  achieves  the  object  behind  the  writing, 
the  reader  must,  so  far  as  possible,  set  himself  at 
John's  point  of  view,  and  must  judge  the  Gospel 
by  the  standard  to  which  the  evangelist  himself 
worked.  How  far  the  book  goes  in  the  direction 
of  proving  its  author's  case  can  only  be  determined 
by  a  student  who,  through  all  his  attentive 
reading,  preserves  within  him  a  true  memory  of 
the  proposition  which  is  to  stand  or  fall.  Exact 
I 


2  THE  PURPOSE  AND  METHOD 


comprehension  of,  and  close  grasp  upon,  the 
doctrine  in  John's  mind,  are  indispensable  to  us  if 
we  are  going  to  test  the  degree  in  which  John's 
argument  carries  weight ;  and  the  writer  would  be 
entitled  to  complain  of  unfair  dealing  on  our  part, 
did  we  either  praise  his  work  as  sustaining  a 
theory  he  never  meant  it  to  prove,  or  condemn  it 
as  insufficient  to  bear  a  conclusion  he  did  not 
intend  it  to  support.  The  test  we  apply  to  the 
Gospel's  facts  and  suggestions  must,  if  it  is  to 
have  value,  be  identical  with  John's  own. 

Towards  the  end  of  his  Gospel  John  gives  a 
definite  statement  of  the  purpose  which  has  been 
his  guiding  star.  "  These  are  written,  that  ye 
may  believe  that  Jesus  is  the  Christ,  the  Son  of 
God ;  and  that  believing  ye  may  have  life  in 
his  name."  Yet  it  is  possible  to  read  even  an 
announcement  so  clear  as  this  without  fully 
appreciating  its  content,  and  without,  therefore, 
being  able  to  put  it  to  its  right  use  as  the  touch- 
stone of  the  whole  book's  success.  It  is  not  a  fair 
— or  at  any  rate  not  an  exhaustive — paraphrase  of 
the  statement  to  say  that  John's  Gospel  is  written 


OF  THE  GOSPEL 


3 


in  defence  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Divinity  of  Christ, 
and  in  order  that  certain  results  may  follow  in  our 
experience  upon  an  intellectual  acceptance  of  it : 
each  outstanding  point  of  the  sentence  carries  a 
significance  beyond  that  which  first  appears ;  and 
we  must  interpret  the  words  "  believe,"  "  Son  of 
God,"  "  have  life  in  his  name,"  as  John  interpreted 
them — or  at  least  be  receptive  to  the  fact  that  John 
employed  these  words  with  a  meaning  over  and 
above  their  first  simplicity — before  we  can  even 
understand  what  the  writer  would  be  at. 

Yet  it  is  of  course  equally  true  to  say  that  the 
full  significance  of  the  declaration  can  only  be 
apprehended  after  the  Gospel  has  been  read ;  and 
the  fact  that  the  evangelist  places  this  succinct 
summary  of  the  intentions  which  have  swayed  him 
practically  at  the  close,  rather  than  at  the  be- 
ginning, of  his  work  seems  to  indicate  that  he 
himself  viewed  the  matter  so.  The  Gospel  needs 
to  be  studied  in  the  light  of  this  declaration,  and 
yet  the  declaration  can  be  fully  apprehended  only 
in  the  Gospel's  light — how  are  we  to  escape  from 
the  circle  to  which  we  thus  appear  condemned  ? 

This  much,  it  may  be  said  in  reply,  we  can 


4  THE  PURPOSE  AND  METHOD 


gather  at  once  from  John's  brief  concluding  ex- 
planation of  what  his  aims  have  been,  and  this 
much  we  may  take  back  with  us  to  the  reading  of 
his  book  (leaving  the  complete  understanding  of 
his  final  summary  to  dawn  upon  us  when  it  will)  as 
a  lamp  which  will  go  far  to  light  us  through  page 
after  page.  If  we  give  due  weight  to  the  final 
clause  of  the  evangelist's  summarising  statement 
— "  and  that  believing  ye  may  have  life  in  his 
name" — the  inference  emerges  that  in  the 
divineness  of  Jesus  John  held  a  new  force  (not 
merely  a  new  revelation^  but  a  new  force^  in  the 
strict  and  scientifically  limited  meaning  of  the 
term)  to  have  thrown  itself  among  the  forces 
acting  upon  the  experience  of  men.  On  those 
who  believe — whatever  the  precise  attitude  of 
mind  and  heart  indicated  by  that  word  may  be — 
the  divine  life  in  Jesus  works  in  such  wise  as  to 
communicate  itself  to  them.  Christ  possessed  a 
life  which  was  able  to  repeat  itself — a  life  which 
could  generate  life — in  those  who  gave  it  oppor- 
tunity and  room  ;  and  this  creativeness,  being  the 
prerogative  of  God,  shows  Christ  to  have  been 
God's  Son.    That  is  John's  case.    His  aim  is  to 


OF  THE  GOSPEL 


5 


demonstrate  that  in  this  Jesus  of  whom  he  writes 
there  dwells  an  active,  energising  power  such 
as  has  never  visited  the  world  before :  it  is  not 
merely  the  appearance  of  a  self-contained  super- 
natural phenomenon  that  he  speaks  of :  he  would 
bring  his  readers,  not  only  to  acknowledge  the 
presence  of  something  marvellous  in  this  Jesus, 
but  the  emergence  of  something  marvellous  from 
Him,  operating  upon  human  experience  to  touch 
it  to  issues  not  hitherto  included  in  its  range ;  and 
in  his  Gospel  John  advances  no  speculative  theory 
accompanied  by  reasonings  which,  it  is  hoped,  will 
tend  to  demonstrate  its  truth,  but  seeks,  from 
the  manifestations  of  indwelling  power  which  the 
history  of  Jesus  affords,  to  lead  students  of  the 
history  to  yield  themselves  to  that  power  in  their 
turn.  "  Here  is  a  new  force  revealed — will  you 
not  open  your  hearts  that  it  may  do  there  the 
work  my  pages  show  it  as  being  able  to  do  ?  " 

John,  in  brief,  is  not  so  much  the  philosopher 
(despite  the  admitted  fact  that  his  Gospel  is  in 
its  fundamental  idea  philosophic  above  the  rest) 
as  he  is  the  discoverer  and  announcer  of  a  new 
force  which  in  the  earthly  years  of  Jesus  alighted 


6  THE  PURPOSE  AND  METHOD 


in  the  midst  of  men.  He  adopts,  and  wishes  his 
readers  to  adopt,  the  inductive  method.  Here  is 
a  power  operating  in  this  way,  and  in  this,  and  in 
this — what  is  the  doctrine  about  it  which  combines 
the  distinctive  and  essential  features  of  all  the 
results  it  brings  to  pass  ?  By  what  name  shall 
this  force  be  clearly  marked  off  from  all  the  other 
forces  we  know  ?  Jesus,  not  simply  as  divine  in 
Himself,  but  as  the  divine  life  communicating 
itself  to  the  common  life  of  man,  the  divine  life 
thrusting  itself  upon  human  experience  and  human 
hearts  to  transform  them — that  is  the  conception 
to  which  this  writer  desires  his  readers  to  attain 
when  their  reading  is  done.  And  the  question 
which  the  student  of  to-day  must  propound  to 
himself  as  he  passes  into  John's  company  is  this, 
What  manner  of  force  can  that  be  which, 
working  upon  the  material  presented  to  it  by  man 
himself  and  by  the  world  in  which  man  lived,  pro- 
duced effects  such  as  those  here  set  down  ?  "  For 
that  is  the  question  to  which  John  offers  a  reply. 

The  distinction  between  Jesus  as  divine  in 
Himself,  and  Jesus  as  divineness  acting  upon, 
communicating   itself   to,  human   character  till 


OF  THE  GOSPEL 


7 


human  character  is  in  measure  tuned  to  divine 
pitch,  transfused  with  the  divineness  which  acts 
upon  it,  is  a  distinction  entirely  essential  to  a 
comprehension  of  John's  Gospel — entirely  essen- 
tial, indeed,  it  is  not  too  much  to  say,  to  any 
Christian  experience  that  is  to  be  in  any  wise 
profound.  Certainly  it  was  not  John's  intention 
simply  to  add  to  the  sum  of  human  knowledge 
a  knowledge  of  the  fact  that  something  surpass- 
ingly wonderful  had  flashed  across  the  horizon 
of  human  view.  And,  in  fact,  it  needs  scarce 
any  consideration  to  perceive  that  if  this  were 
all  that  is  to  be  said  about  the  divineness  of 
Christ,  a  recognition  of  it  would  leave  the 
essential  problem  of  human  character  much 
what  it  was  before.  This  Jesus  may  have  said 
certain  things  and  done  certain  things  which 
show  Him  to  have  had  His  origin  outside  our 
earth :  the  sources  whence  spring  the  average 
types  of  human  life — even  the  sources  whence 
the  grand  and  heroic  types  of  human  life  emerge 
— may  be  admittedly  insufficient  to  produce  such 
a  life  as  this ;  but  the  mere  appearance  of  a  life 
isolated,  in  its  divine  origination,  from  the  ordinary 


8  THE  PURPOSE  AND  METHOD 


lives  of  men  leaves  those  ordinary  lives  to  climb 
and  raise  themselves  as  they  did  before.  A 
supernatural  revelation  which  is  nothing  more 
would  have  the  dynamic  quality  only  in  very 
small  degree.  Men  might  be  encouraged  by  the 
spoken  word,  drawn  by  the  revealed  ideal ;  but 
the  old  problems  would  face  them  still.  Not 
until  the  divineness  in  Jesus  is  viewed  as  actually 
creative  —  as  entering  into,  reproducing  itself 
within,  those  who  are  willing  to  admit  it,  does 
even  a  divine  Jesus  change  for  us  the  problem 
of  character  and  the  method  by  which  it  is  to  be 
solved.  To  employ  and  submit  to  a  force  is  a 
different  thing  from  being  stirred  by  a  miracle  or 
kindled  by  new  ideas.  Christ  as  divine  in  Him- 
self is  but  a  miracle  on  which  through  the  ages 
human  eyes  look  back  with  wonder :  Christ  as 
a  creative  divine  life,  as  a  divine  force  which  for 
the  first  time  sets  itself  at  the  disposal  of  men  in 
their  spiritual  strife,  changes,  wholly  and  hope- 
fully, the  spiritual  programme  and  the  spiritual 
prospect  of  men.  And  it  is  to  the  point  of  con- 
ceiving and  receiving  Him  so  that  John  would 
have  his  readers  be  led. 


OF  THE  GOSPEL 


9 


We  shall  be  prepared,  if  this  be  understood,  to 
find  John's  purpose  influencing  the  character  of 
his  argument,  and  giving  a  particular  tone  and 
colour  to  all  the  process  of  his  thought  and  word. 
The  presence  of  an  active  force  is  not  proved 
through  logical  syllogisms :  it  is  nothing  to  the 
point  to  say  that  this  Gospel  affords  no  reasoned 
demonstration — starting  from  universally  accepted 
premises,  and  reaching  at  last  to  a  conclusion 
irresistible  by  the  mind — of  the  divineness  of 
Jesus  Christ :  John's  business  is  not  the  logical 
unfolding  of  what  certain  admitted  general 
principles  contain.  The  complaint  that  such 
an  unfolding  is  not  provided  is  really  what 
lies  behind  many  refusals,  made  confessedly  on 
philosophic  grounds,  to  recognise  Christ  as  "  the 
Son  of  God."  But  purely  logical  demonstration 
can  find  no  place  in  this  field.  It  is  not  by  pure 
logic  that  men  are  brought  to  believe  in  the 
presence  and  activity  of  force.  A  force  proves 
its  presence  by  producing  its  appropriate  effects ; 
and  the  only  exercise  the  mind  can  have  to 
perform  in  such  matters  as  these  is  to  reason 
back  from  the  character  of  the  effects  to  the 


lo         THE  PURPOSE  AND  METHOD 


character  of  the  force  behind  them.  We  perceive 
certain  things,  and  conclude  that  electricity  is  at 
work :  we  feel  certain  things,  and  they  amply 
demonstrate  to  us  that  heat  is  there :  in  some 
fashion  results  announce  themselves,  and  we 
know  what  cause  is  passing  by :  we  start,  in  fact, 
not  with  a  priori  reasonings,  but  with  that  which 
the  eye  can  see  and  the  hands  can  handle;  and 
the  purely  logical  faculty,  working  as  it  does  in 
the  abstract  realms,  could  never  establish  the 
actual  existence  of  a  concrete  and  energising 
force.  In  this  field,  the  effect  is  the  premiss. 
Of  course,  reason  may  go  on  to  show  how,  within 
a  universe  ordered  in  all  things  and  sure,  such  a 
power  as  that  whose  presence  we  have  been  led 
to  suspect  may  well  find  a  home.  How  the 
working  of  such  a  power  is  entirely  in  harmony 
with  a  philosophically  satisfactory  and  complete 
scheme  of  things  may  be  made  clear,  to  the 
further  confirming  of  a  new-born  faith.  But  this 
is  not  included  in  John's  plan,  although  the 
prologue  to  his  Gospel  gives  sufficient  token  that 
on  this  point,  also,  his  conviction  was  firm.  The 
first  and  primary  operation  of  the  mind,  as  some 


OF  THE  GOSPEL 


II 


power  strikes  into  its  field  of  vision,  is  to  gather 
the  nature  of  the  power  at  work  from  the  nature 
of  the  seen  results.  To  demonstrate  that  the 
power  is  there,  the  demonstrator  must  bid  his 
hearers  attend  to  what  the  power  has  wrought : 
the  hearers'  minds,  then,  must  take  or  refuse  the 
last  step.  John's  whole  dealing  with  his  readers 
is  the  definite  recording  of  definite  things  ac- 
complished by  the  force  which  dwelt  in  Jesus 
Christ.  His  pages  can  only  carry,  not  syllogisms 
and  arguments  and  logical  proofs  piled  high  until 
the  mind  is  compelled  to  say  "  Amen,"  but 
concrete  signs  which  indicate  that  out  of  this 
Christ  some  power  was  reaching  forth  to  touch 
the  world.  And  from  the  consideration  of  these 
signs,  from  the  uniform  character  which  amid  all 
their  variety  they  bore,  from  the  unique  impress 
stamped  upon  every  one,  John  hoped  that  those 
who  read  would  be  brought  to  call  this  Christ- 
force  the  very  creative  life  of  God. 

It  is  in  the  same  line  of  things  to  say  that  the 
final  certainty  of  Christ's  divineness  is  attained 
by  the  way  of  experience.    If  Christ's  divineness 


12         THE  PURPOSE  AND  METHOD 


means,  as  we  have  seen  that  for  John  it  did 
mean,  not  only  that  Christ  was  from  above,  but 
that  the  force  of  divine  creativeness  was  in  Him, 
it  cannot  be  otherwise  than  by  experience  that 
the  supreme  demonstration  of  His  divineness 
comes  home.  With  forces  it  is  always  so.  The 
material  forces  of  the  world  are  proved  for  us  by 
our  experience  of  them  in  the  particular  sense 
to  which  they  make  their  appeal.  This  divine 
creativeness  of  Christ  is  proved  for  us  when 
through  the  whole  range  of  life  (since  the  appeal 
of  such  a  force  can  have  no  narrower  object  than 
that)  it  has  done  its  creative  work.  There  is 
nothing  to  be  ashamed  of  in  the  fact — though 
by  those  who  do  not  grasp  the  essentials  of  the 
problem  it  be  made  a  reproach — that  we  hold 
Christ  to  be  the  Son  of  God  because  we  have 
experienced  Him  to  be  so.  To  base  our  con- 
viction upon  the  foundation  of  experience  is 
in  no  wise  to  be  carried  away  by  a  shallow 
emotionalism,  and  is,  in  very  deed,  an  indication 
of  the  perfect  sanity  of  our  faith.  Our  belief  in 
the  divineness  of  Jesus  Christ  ranks  thus  with 
our  belief  in  all  other  forces  that  sweep  the  world. 


OF  THE  GOSPEL 


13 


The  sense  that  Christ's  divine  creativeness  has 
touched  us  is  the  last  confirmation  of  the  belief 
that  He  is  divine.  And  John's  presentation  of 
effects  which  this  force  has  wrought  can  only  be 
the  preface  to  an  experience  wherein  it  repeats 
all  the  wonders  of  old.  He  can  but  show  us  what 
the  power  has  performed  in  order  that  his  doctrine 
concerning  its  nature  may  have  its  greatest  vindi- 
cation for  us  when  we  submit  to  its  sway. 

It  is  for  a  cumulative  process  of  thought  and 
suggestion  that  we  must  look.  It  is  not  from  a 
first  manifestation  of  energising  power,  nor  from 
a  second  or  a  third — but  from  the  combined 
testimony  of  the  three  —  that  we  arrive  at 
certainty  as  to  the  force  which  has  produced 
them  all.  What  John  undertakes  is  a  survey  of 
a  certain  field  of  history — a  field  broad  enough, 
and  on  a  scale  amply  large,  to  permit  of  a  safe 
generalisation  as  to  what  lay  back  of  the  recorded 
events.  And  the  mind  must  wait  for  the  develop- 
ment, patient  while  the  separate  threads  weave 
themselves  into  one  firm  strand,  allowing  time 
for  the  impression  to  grow.    It  must  be  driven 


14  PURPOSE  AND  METHOD  OF  THE  GOSPEL 


to  its  definition  of  this  power  at  last  by  the 
impossibility  of  finding  any  other  definition  that 
gives  consistency  to  the  manifested  results.  Here 
is  no  sudden  elevation  to  the  summit  of  a  firm 
and  convinced  belief.  Here  is  rather  a  long 
climb  up  a  gradual  slope — the  climber  turning 
at  the  end,  to  be  surprised  at  the  altitude  he 
has  reached.  And  not  only  is  it  a  cumulative 
argument  for  which  we  are  to  be  prepared — an 
argument  whose  strength  lies  in  the  combination 
of  all  its  elements,  and  whose  full  strength,  there- 
fore, is  not  to  be  appreciated  till  all  the  elements  are 
given — but  even  for  some  records  whose  relevance 
to  the  main  purpose  of  the  writer  is  not  immediately 
clear.  These,  too,  will  obtain  and  reveal  their 
significance  when  the  process  is  complete.  If  some 
of  the  incidents  standing  on  the  page  seem  to 
strike  notes  that  contribute  little  or  nothing  to  the 
music  which  this  evangelist  wants  to  make  us  hear, 
we  shall  find  at  length  that  all  is  harmony  after  all. 

So  we  turn  to  the  things  that  are  written, 
that  we  may  see  what  force  has  worked  itself 
into  the  effects  these  pages  record. 


II. 


CHRIST  SEEN  AS  FULFILLING  THE 
ETERNAL  INTENTION:  THE  WORD 
MADE  FLESH. 


F  the  four  Gospels,  John's  is  the  only  one 


which  sets  out  with  a  theory  to  be  sup- 
ported by  the  narrative  to  come.  The  other 
evangelists  recapitulate  the  facts  of  Christ's  life, 
or  a  portion  of  them,  simply — one  might  say — 
from  the  historian's  point  of  view :  one  by  one 
the  incidents  are  detailed,  the  discourses  reported, 
each  incident  and  each  discourse  being  taken  as 
practically  an  isolated  thing ;  and  while  it  is  of 
course  impossible  to  tell  the  story  of  Christ 
without  suggesting  certain  doctrines  and  in- 
ferences, the  writers  leave  it  at  that,  allowing 
the  doctrines  to  emerge  out  of  the  story  as  they 


John  i.  1-18. 


i6        CHRIST  SEEN  AS  FULFILLING 


may,  not  at  all  arranging  the  story  to  support  the 
doctrines.  With  John's  Gospel  the  case  stands 
differently  altogether.  His  doctrine,  his  theory, 
is  clear  in  his  mind  before  his  pen  begins  to 
move.  He  possesses,  indeed,  more  even  than 
what  would  be  commonly  understood  by  a 
doctrine  about  Christ :  he  possesses  what  one 
might  term  a  whole  system  of  philosophy  whereof 
Christ  is  the  culminating  point  and  wherein  Christ 
is  the  supreme  figure ;  and  this  prologue  to  his 
Gospel,  as  contained  in  the  first  eighteen  verses, 
indicates  what  it  is.  In  these  verses  he  sets  forth 
the  theory  about  Christ  which  his  future  writing 
is  to  illustrate :  they  form  the  text,  as  it  were, 
of  which  the  following  Gospel  is  the  expanded 
discourse.  Towards  the  end  of  the  book,  when 
nearly  all  the  tale  has  been  told,  John  sums  up 
again,  in  briefer  form,  the  thesis  to  which  he  has 
devoted  his  labour ;  and,  as  we  have  seen,  this  is 
the  summary  he  then  constructs,  "  Many  other 
signs  therefore  did  Jesus  in  the  presence  of  the 
disciples,  which  are  not  written  in  this  book :  but 
these  are  written,  that  ye  may  believe  that  Jesus 
is  the  Christ,  the  Son  of  God ;  and  that  believing 


THE  ETERNAL  INTENTION  17 


ye  may  have  life  in  his  name."  He  has  been 
selecting,  that  is  to  say,  those  "  signs "  of  word 
and  deed  on  the  part  of  Jesus  which  went 
specially  to  uphold  the  doctrine  that  "  Jesus  is  the 
Christ,  the  Son  of  God,"  and  which  would  lead 
men  to  submit  themselves  to  the  divine  life  in 
Him ;  and  other  signs,  numerous  and  essentially 
arresting  as  they  might  be,  which  did  not  so 
directly  tend  to  that,  he  has  passed  by.  His 
Gospel  has  been  written  with  the  set  purpose 
of  throwing  the  divineness  of  Christ — in  the  full 
sense  our  previous  chapter  set  upon  the  phrase — 
and  His  relation  as  Son  to  God  the  Father,  into 
bold  relief  before  the  reader's  eye.  With  careful 
discrimination  John  has  chosen  out  the  incidents 
in  the  life  of  Jesus  which,  as  the  reader  appre- 
hends them,  will  repeatedly  constrain  him  to  say, 
"  Here  is  the  divineness  in  this  Jesus  revealing 
itself  once  more.  This  Jesus  must  be  the  Christ, 
the  Son  of  God." 

This  prologue  contains  in  fuller — one  might 
say,  in  more  philosophical — form,  the  doctrine 
about  Christ  which  John  sets  into  briefer  expres- 
sion at  his  Gospel's  close.    "  I  am  going  to  write  " 
2 


i8        CHRIST  SEEN  AS  FULFILLING 

(so  we  may  paraphrase  it)  "  of  One  who  is  the 
Word  of  God."  Word,  speech,  is  of  course  the 
most  direct  and  immediate  revelation  of  him  who 
employs  it,  springing  straight  out  of  what,  at  the 
moment  of  the  speaking,  the  speaker  is :  speech 
is  our  quickest,  readiest,  surest  method  of  ex- 
pressing ourselves  when  the  necessity  for  self 
expression  arises.  There  is  nothing  that  can 
come  between  us  and  the  word  whereby  we  re- 
veal what  we  are.  Outside  circumstances,  unless 
of  course  superior  physical  force  silences  us 
altogether,  have  no  influence  that  can  spoil  or 
interfere  with  the  connection  between  that  which 
is  in  us  and  the  utterance  in  which  it  is  embodied. 
It  is  in  our  word  that  the  inmost  nature  of  us 
comes  to  its  birth  for  the  world  beyond.  So 
Christ  is  the  direct,  immediate  method  by  which 
God  utters  Himself.  God  puts  Himself  into 
Christ  as  we  put  ourselves  into  speech.  What 
is  in  Christ  springs  straight  out  of  what  is  in 
God,  as  the  speaker's  word  springs  straight  out 
of  what  the  speaker  is.  He  is  the  Word  of 
God. 

But  John  has  larger  thoughts  even  than  that — 


THE  ETERNAL  INTENTION 


if  larger  thoughts  than  that  be  possible — crowding 
into  his  mind  as  he  frames  this  philosophy  of  his, 
previous  to  beginning  the  actual  story  he  has 
to  tell.  Christ  is  the  Word ;  and  the  intention 
which  dwelt  in  the  mind  of  God  from  all  eternity 
was  that  this  great  Word  should  be  spoken  and 
this  expression  of  the  divine  life  should  be  made ; 
and  all  the  activities  of  creation,  all  the  processes 
through  which  the  world  came  to  be  what  it  is, 
looked  on  to,  were  only  the  preface  to,  that 
utterance  of  the  Christ- Word :  for  "  all  things 
were  made  through  him " — made  with  a  view 
to  His  coming  and  His  earthly  day.  That  was 
what  God  held  ever-present :  "  the  same  was  in 
the  beginning  with  God."  And  not  only  so,  but 
it  was  God's  ordaining  and  God's  will  that  man 
should  reach  to  his  true  and  best  life  only  through 
union  with  the  divine  life  as  it  expressed  itself  in 
the  Christ- Word :  "  in  him  was  life ;  and  the  life 
was  the  light  of  men  " :  clearly  revealed  in  Him 
was  that  which  man  in  his  imperfection  needed 
if  he  was  to  be  made  complete.  Christ  was  not 
only  the  revelation  of  the  divine  life,  the  Word 
which  told    the    divine  life,  but    He  was  the 


20        CHRIST  SEEN  AS  FULFILLING 


bestower  of  perfect  life  upon  man,  whose  life  was 
imperfect  still  He  is  the  life  and  light  of  man — 
the  light,  because  man  discerns,  beside  the  Christ, 
how  it  is  the  Christ's  fulness  of  life  he  needs  must 
have,  sees  flashed  out  upon  him  a  revelation  of 
what  life  should  be — the  life,  because  from  Christ 
life  passes  to  those  who  will  take  it  at  His  offer. 
And  so,  as  we  saw,  John,  at  his  Gospel's  close, 
declares  his  purpose  to  have  been,  not  only  to 
make  his  readers  believe  that  Jesus  is  the  Son  of 
God,  possessor  of  the  divine  life,  but  to  bring 
them,  through  their  believing,  to  possess  life 
themselves.  "  These  are  written,  that  ye  may 
believe  that  Jesus  is  the  Christ,  the  Son  of  God ; 
and  that  believing  ye  may  have  life  in  his 
name." 

It  is  upon  a  vast  sea  of  thought  that  John 
has  thus  launched  himself  and  his  readers  before 
the  story  of  Christ's  human  life  begins.  Christ 
is  to  be  taken  as  the  expression  of  the  divine  life, 
as  the  coming  of  the  divine  life  to  birth  visibly 
before  the  eyes  of  men ;  and  this  coming  of  the 
divine  life  to  the  world  in  Christ  was  the  thing 
for  which  the  world  had  been  made  and  to  which 


THE  ETERNAL  INTENTION  21 


history  had  been  tending,  and  which  man — quite 
apart,  it  must  be  noted,  from  any  question  of  sin 
at  all :  John  has  not  touched  that  matter  yet — 
which  man  needed  if  in  the  fullest  sense  of  the 
word  he  was  to  live  indeed.  It  is  not  (and  I 
think  that,  if  this  be  realised,  our  relationship  to 
Christ,  sweet  as  in  any  case  it  is,  becomes  sweeter 
still,  and  the  whole  Christian  gospel,  wondrous  as 
in  any  conception  of  it  it  must  always  be,  takes 
on  a  wondrousness  more  inexpressible  yet) — it  is 
not  only  our  sin  that  has  made  us  require  Christ : 
had  the  human  heart  never  turned  itself  to  the 
love  of  things  which  are  unworthy  of  its  love,  had 
the  human  will  never  taken  wrong  decisions  to 
the  impairing  of  its  power  and  to  the  perverting 
of  all  the  activities  the  will  inspires — still,  apart 
from  Christ,  man  could  never  have  risen  to  his 
best,  could  never  have  entered  into  possession  of 
that  life  of  God  which  can  alone  fill  his  nature ; 
and  even  if  man  had  not  fallen  so  low  that  only 
a  Christ  can  redeem  him  out  of  his  lowness,  he 
would  still  have  had  dizzy  heights  of  divine  per- 
fection above  him  to  which  only  a  Christ  can 
draw  him  up.     In  Him,  in  Christ,  and  only  in 


22        CHRIST  SEEN  AS  FULFILLING 


Him,  was  and  is  life.  The  absoluteness  of  the 
statement  requires  us  to  believe  that  without 
Him — leaving  the  question  of  sin  wholly  out 
of  the  reckoning — we  could  have  possessed  no 
more  than  the  beginnings  of  life,  dim  aspirings 
after  life  which  would  have  served  but  to  torment 
our  helpless  souls.  From  the  beginning  it  was 
ordained  that  with  God's  utterance  of  His  Word 
in  Christ  the  day  of  perfect  life  for  man  should 
dawn.  So,  I  say,  was  it  ordained  to  be,  and  so, 
as  we  set  ourselves  close  to  Christ,  do  we  re- 
cognise that  it  is :  He  kindles  the  light  wherein 
we  see  ourselves  and  see  Him ;  and,  as  He 
becomes  to  us  the  light,  we  understand  how  He 
must  become  to  us  the  life.  In  Him  is  life,  and 
the  life  is  the  light  of  men. 

Objection  is  sometimes  taken  to  the  idea  that, 
even  under  a  normal  course  of  human  develop- 
ment— a  course  undisturbed  by  the  intrusion  of 
sin — Christ  would  still  have  been  the  source  out 
of  which  that  development  would  have  obtained 
its  final  completion,  on  the  ground  that  by  the 
adoption  of  that  idea  some  subtraction  is  made 
from  the  honour  due  to  the  sacrifice  of  Christ's 


THE  ETERNAL  INTENTION  23 

Cross.-^  The  Cross  is  no  more  the  entirely 
exceptional  thing  it  was,  and  stands  out  less 
prominently  as  a  testimony  to  redemptive  love, 
if  it  be  held  that  anything  else  than  the  sin  of 
man  brought  Christ  to  earth.  If  Christ's  descent 
to  the  level  of  man,  and  Christ's  relating  of 
Himself  to  man  and  of  man  to  Himself,  be,  so 
to  say,  in  the  natural  line  of  things,  the  wondrous 
glow  is  dimmed  on  Calvary.  I  confess  I  can  see 
no  force  in  the  plea.  Surely  it  is  enough  to  say, 
in  reply,  that  belief  in  the  inevitableness  of  Christ 
— if  the  phrase  may  stand — leaves  untouched  and 
undiminished  all  the  wonder  of  that  love  which, 
when  the  world's  sin  had  made  the  Cross  in- 
evitable too,  did  not  shrink.  It  is  not  a  smaller 
miracle  of  grace  that  God,  having  purposed  to 
send  His  Son  for  the  perfecting  of  the  life  of 
man,  should  still  fulfil  His  first  purpose  although 
man's  transgression  had  thrust  the  Cross  among 
the  burdens  to  be  borne  in  its  fulfilment,  than 
that  God  should  frame  a  new  purpose  of  sending 
His  Son  because  the  appearance  of  man's  trans- 

^  This  appears  to  be  the  burden  of  Dr.  Denney's  objection.  See 
The  Death  of  Chist,  p.  209  sqq. 


24        CHRIST  SEEN  AS  FULFILLING 


gression  so  required.  On  the  one  view  as  on 
the  other,  Calvary  stands  as  the  witness  to  God's 
changeless  love.  Indeed,  on  the  suggested  view 
that  Christ  would  in  any  wise  have  been  the 
fulfilment  of  human  life,  the  wonder  of  Calvary 
looms  larger  rather  than  recedes.  Since  man  has 
sinned,  man's  redemption  must  be  begun — is  the 
conception  which  lies  beneath  the  opinion  that  sin 
alone  called  Christ  to  earth.  Though  man  has 
sinned,  man's  purposed  redemption  into  fulness 
of  life  must  nevertheless  be  consummated,  even 
if  its  consummation  necessitates  the  giving  of 
the  Son  to  death  as  well  as  to  life — is  the  con- 
ception which  lies  beneath  the  view  suggested 
here.  And  herein  is  certainly  no  dishonour 
either  to  the  tenderness  of  God  or  to  the 
marvellous  wonder  of  the  Cross  whereon  the 
Saviour  died.  The  Cross,  interposed  in  the 
Father's  ordained  design  (although  of  course  all 
these  phrases  must  be  qualified  by  a  due  re- 
cognition of  a  foreknowledge  in  God  wherein 
all  human  history  was  wrapped  from  the  begin- 
ning), may  drive  us  to  our  knees  in  adoration 
no  less  than  a  Cross  which  is  the  sign  of  a 


THE  ETERNAL  INTENTION  25 


new  redemptive  process  supplanting  the  old.  A 
love  which,  spite  of  all  the  obstacles  of  sin, 
clung  to  and  carried  through  its  first  Will,  is  as 
constraining  as  a  love  new-born. 

If  we  may  anticipate  in  part  what  will  become 
clearer  as  the  study  of  John's  pages  passes  on, 
it  may  be  said  also  that  whenever  the  voice  of 
Christ's  self-consciousness  is  heard,  there  rings 
in  it  the  sense  that  His  mission  to  man  was  a 
mission  which,  however  sin  may  have  changed 
some  of  its  accompaniments,  would,  according 
to  the  first  constitution  of  things,  have  been  per- 
formed. When,  for  instance,  Christ  speaks  of 
Himself  as  the  bread  of  life,  the  very  form  of 
the  statement  shuts  away  any  idea  of  His  self- 
communication  having  been  necessitated  by  sin 
alone.  The  suggested  relationship  is  too  intimate 
and  fundamental  —  too  much  grounded  in  the 
nature  of  things — to  have  been,  so  to  say,  lately 
adopted.  And  through  many  other  utterances 
of  Christ's  the  same  conviction  looks  out  upon 
us,  though  at  first  its  glance  be  not  recognised  or 
felt.  When  Christ  declared  Himself  to  be  the 
Way,  the  Truth,  and  the  Life,  does  not  the  second 


26        CHRIST  SEEN  AS  FULFILLING 


title  of  the  three  claimed  send  our  thought  along 
the  indicated  line?  Christ  is  the  way  to  the 
Father ;  but  He  is  more  than  that.  He  is  the 
truth  of  God,  the  changelessness  of  God,  fulfilling 
itself.  There  are  "  ways  "  which  are  not  realised 
as  being  the  "  truth  "  —  ways  of  accomplishing 
something  which  we  adopt  because  the  sudden 
arising  of  special  circumstances  compels  it,  but 
which  are  not  in  harmony,  we  know,  with  the 
essential  truth  and  order  of  things,  and  which,  if 
life  had  been  perfectly  ordered,  would  have  found 
no  place.  They  serve  our  turn,  but  it  would 
have  been  better  if  there  had  been  no  call  for 
their  use.  This  method  of  meeting  the  need  of 
the  moment  may  be  the  "  way "  for  the  time 
being ;  but  it  is  not  the  "  truth "  —  a  perfect 
management  of  matters  would  have  dispensed 
with  it.  The  second  of  Christ's  asserted  titles 
closes  the  door  against  any  such  conception  here. 
He  is  no  suddenly  devised  expedient  to  meet  a 
special  need — an  expedient  for  which,  had  the 
world  been  what  it  ought  to  be,  there  would 
have  been  no  call.  But  "  I  am  the  truth " — in 
finding  their  way  to  God  through  Me,  men  are 


THE  ETERNAL  INTENTION  27 


finding  it  as  God  always  meant  them  to  find  it. 
In  His  sending  of  Me  the  Father  is  true  to 
His  own  eternal  thought.  And  to  that  idea 
our  thoughts  about  Christ  need  to  cling.  That 
through  the  sinfulness  of  man  Christ's  ministry 
in  bringing  man  to  God  was  different  far  from 
what  in  a  sinless  world  His  ministry  would  have 
been,  is  of  course  not  denied :  it  was  sin  which 
laid  on  Him  His  cross,  sin  which  smote  His  heart 
with  pain,  sin  which  surrounded  His  gracious 
working  with  many  a  hindering  prejudice  and 
many  a  cruel  opposition,  sin  which  round  the 
brow  that  should  have  worn  a  diadem  wove  thorns  ; 
but  even  a  sinless  humanity,  if  such  a  thing  had 
been,  would  have  fulfilled  its  destiny  in  God  the 
Father  only  by  means  of  God  the  Son  ;  and,  the 
question  of  sin  wholly  apart,  it  was  the  Father's 
good  pleasure  that  in  the  Son  should  all  the 
fulness  dwell,  and  that  through  the  Christ  should 
there  be  a  gathering  together  of  all.  From  the 
beginning  the  Christ  was,  as  it  were,  built  into 
the  Father's  scheme.  Sin  deepened,  but  did  not 
make,  man's  need  of  Him.  And  it  is  no  idle 
and  profitless  speculation,  but  a  real  intensifying 


28        CHRIST  SEEN  AS  FULFILLING 


of  the  sweetness  of  discipleship,  to  believe  that 
even  if  Christ  had  not  needed  to  come  as  Jesus 
to  save  His  people  from  their  sins,  He  would 
still  have  made  our  world  glorious  as  Emmanuel, 
God  with  us.  In  Him  God  does  what  He  always 
intended  to  do. 

So,  coming  back  to  our  Gospel's  present  page, 
we  may  take  John  as  holding  that  from  all 
eternity  this  Christ  of  whom  he  is  about  to 
tell  was  predestined  to  be  the  life  and  light  of 
men.  As  man  relates  himself  to  Christ,  man's 
life  enters  into  the  home  prepared  for  it  of  old. 
Viewing  things  almost  from  the  standpoint  of 
the  Eternal  Himself  (if  one  may  say  so)  John 
beholds  God  putting  His  own  life  into  the  Christ, 
and  through  the  Christ  into  man. 

Suddenly  now,  as  if  on  these  heights  the  air 
were  becoming  too  keen  and  rare,  John  drops 
down  to  speak  of  things  as  from  the  standpoint 
of  man.  This  Christ,  bearing  in  Him  the  divine 
life  in  which  man  was  intended  to  find  his  life, 
came  down  to  earth :  it  is  the  story  of  His  com- 
ing the  evangelist  is  going  to  tell.    Well,  what 


THE  ETERNAL  INTENTION  29 


actually  happened  when  He  came  ?  What  sort 
of  a  story  will  it  be  ?  A  story  of  conflict,  certainly 
— for  "  the  light  shineth  in  the  darkness."  "  I 
shall  have  to  tell  how  the  dark  passions  of  the 
human  heart  stirred  themselves  in  resistance  to 
this  light  and  this  life — how  man,  who  should 
have  taken  life  from  this  Christ,  refused  to  live." 
And  yet,  though  it  be  a  story  of  conflict,  it  will 
be  a  story,  too,  leading  to  a  triumphant  end. 
"  And  the  light  shineth  in  the  darkness ;  and 
the  darkness  overcame  it  not."  ^  It  was  the  light 
which  triumphed  after  all,  although  it  had  to 
struggle  against  the  darkness  of  the  world.  There 
will  be  opposition  to  tell  of,  and  awful  bitterness 
of  hatred  which  set  up  a  cross  at  last ;  but  then 
a  Resurrection  at  the  end.  "  The  darkness  over- 
came it  not."  So,  as  he  plunges  into  the  story 
which  has  the  gloom  of  conflict  upon  it,  does  John 
look  through  as  it  were  to  the  tunnel's  further 
end,  and  feel  sure  that  he  will  come  out  into 
the  blaze  of  day  when  his  journey  is  done.  Dark- 
ness for  a  while ;  but  it  was  after  all  the  light  that 
overcame. 

^  Ver.  5,  margin. 


30        CHRIST  SEEN  AS  FULFILLING 

Still,  the  darkness  fought  hard  against  the 
light,  even  though  it  fought  in  vain.  And  thus  it 
should  not  have  been :  this  opposition  of  man  to 
the  Christ  should  never  have  declared  itself ;  for 
the  world  had  reached  just  to  that  point  at  which 
it  ought  to  have  recognised  and  leapt  out  to  greet 
the  light  and  life  in  Christ.  For  there  came  a 
man — sent  from  God,  certainly,  but  still  a  man — 
John  the  Baptist,  who  came  to  bear  witness  to 
the  One  greater  than  he :  thus  far,  at  any  rate, 
under  the  divine  guidance,  manhood  had  attained 
— to  the  power  of  recognising  and  bearing  witness 
to  the  presence  with  it  of  the  life  whereof  it  stood  so 
sorely  in  need ;  and  still,  spite  of  the  recognition 
and  the  witness,  manhood  rejected  the  life. 

It  is  not  difficult,  and  it  is  moving,  to  grasp 
the  salient  point  of  the  evangelist's  thought.  In 
this  Christ  was  the  life  of  men  prepared  and 
waiting  for  them  from  all  eternity :  men  had 
reached  to  the  point  at  which  they  were  prepared 
and  waiting  for  the  Christ ;  and  yet,  though 
Christ  was  waiting  for  man  and  man  was  waiting 
for  Christ,  it  is  of  conflict,  and  not  of  happy  union, 
between  the  two,  whereof  the  evangelist's  pen 


THE  ETERNAL  INTENTION  31 


must  write.  Christ  ready  for  man,  and  man 
ready  for  Christ,  so  that  man  might  in  very  deed 
and  truth  be  called  Christ's  ozvn ;  but  "  he  came 
unto  his  own,  and  they  that  were  his  own 
received  him  not."  Poor  world — so  John  appears 
to  weep  his  heart  out  over  it — ^poor  world,  to  which 
the  Christ  had  come  so  near,  which  in  its  Baptist 
had  come  so  near  to  the  Christ !  So  near,  and 
yet  you  received  Him  not — what  a  pitiful  tale 
is  this  I  have  to  set  down  !  The  divine  life 
moved  down  to  you,  and  you  moved  so  near  to 
the  divine  life ;  and  then  you  did  not  choose  to 
live.  All  was  ready.  God  had  waited  through 
His  eternities  for  this  hour  to  strike  :  the  world 
had  pressed  on  through  its  history  toward  the 
dawning  of  this  day:  there  needed  now,  at  this 
supreme  moment,  only  the  last  touch  of  responsive- 
ness from  you  to  make  all  things  blest  and  right ; 
and  that  you  withheld.  Some  there  were  who, 
in  better  mood  and  with  truer  wisdom,  realised 
that  here  was  their  redemption  come,  and  deter- 
mined that  not  in  vain  should  it  be  offered  ;  and 
for  these  open-hearted  ones  life  was  crowned 
indeed.    "  As  many  as  received  him,  to  them 


32        CHRIST  SEEN  AS  FULFILLING 


gave  he  the  right  to  become  children  of  God." 
But,  looking  at  the  whole  record  which  has  now 
to  be  set  down,  it  can  but  be  summarised  in  the 
mournful  wail  that  "  he  came  unto  his  own,  and 
they  that  were  his  own  received  him  not." 

Excuse  for  the  rejection  of  the  Christ  by  those 
that  were  His  own,  John  is  unable  to  find.  One 
seems  to  see  how  he  has  asked  himself  the 
question,  "  Is  there  anything  to  be  said  for 
them,  any  plea  to  be  advanced  on  their  behalf, 
through  which  their  offence  grows  less?  In 
arrest  of  judgment,  what  can  they  advance  ? " 
And  he  has  seen  how,  so  far  from  anything  miti- 
gating their  fault,  everything  makes  its  black- 
ness and  its  ugliness  more  pronounced.  Was  it 
a  profound  mystery  they  were  asked  to  explore, 
wherein  their  minds  might  easily  come  to  mis- 
taken conclusions?  Or  was  a  call  made  upon 
their  imagination,  their  reasoning  powers,  upon 
anything  which  some  possess  and  others  lack,  and 
for  the  non-possession  of  which  no  blame  could 
be  theirs  ?  Nay.  They  had  but  to  look  and  see. 
For  "  the  Word  became  flesh,  and  dwelt  among 
us."    "  We  beheld  his  glory,  glory  as  of  the  only 


THE  ETERNAL  INTENTION 


begotten  from  the  Father."  It  was  a  thing  about 
which  no  sane  man  ought  to  have  made  any 
mistake.  The  divineness  in  the  Christ  was  so 
clear  that  they  who  did  not  see  it  must  have 
blinded  their  eyes.  John  does  not  mean,  of 
course,  that  all  who  saw  or  learnt  the  facts  of 
Christ's  human  existence  ought  at  once  to  have 
sprung  to  a  philosophic  theory  of  His  divine- 
ness, or  become  able  to  reduce  Him  to  formu- 
lated doctrines  and  set  terms ;  but  this  much  at 
least  should  have  won  their  flashing  recognition 
straightway,  that  here  was  a  life  and  a  power  of 
a  quality  this  earth  did  not  know.  Whatever  else 
may  have  been  unsettled  about  Him,  as  to  this 
at  least  no  doubt  could  be,  save  for  those  who 
refused  to  believe,  that  He  was  "  full  of  grace  and 
truth." 

To  close  his  preface,  John  turns  away  from 
that  conflict  which  has  saddened  him  so  as  he 
has  recalled  it,  and  lays  close  to  his  mind  and 
heart  once  again  the  great  theme  to  which  he 
is  going  to  devote  his  work.  The  light  had  to 
struggle  against  darkness :  the  Christ  came,  and 
3 


34        CHRIST  SEEN  AS  FULFILLING 

they  that  were  His  own  received  Him  not ;  but 
still,  this  great  truth  remains — let  me  forget  (he 
appears  to  say)  all  about  man's  oppositions  for  a 
moment  as  I  set  down  the  great  truth  once  more 
— that  "  no  man  hath  seen  God  at  any  time,"  but 
that  "  the  only  begotten  Son,  which  is  in  the 
bosom  of  the  Father,  he  hath  declared  him." 
And  I  think  that  as  John  wrote  the  words,  that 
hope  grew  in  him  which  at  the  end  of  his  Gospel 
he  expresses  again — the  hope  that  by  what  he 
wrote  something  of  the  opposition  might  be  con- 
quered, and  some  might  be  brought  to  see  how  in 
this  Son  the  Father  had  been  declared  indeed, 
how  in  this  Christ  the  divine  life  had  indeed  been 
revealed  to  and  bestowed  upon  man. 

Across  these  introductory  verses  of  the  Gospel 
the  lesson  is  writ  large  for  all  time — that  every 
coming  of  the  Christ  to  the  individual  soul  is  such  a 
coming  as  that  coming  to  the  world  of  which  the 
evangelist  tells — the  coming  of  One  who  is  pre- 
pared and  waiting  for  our  life,  of  One  for  whom 
our  life  is  prepared  and  waiting,  of  One  whose  life- 
giving  divineness  is  so  clear  that  He  must  be 


THE  ETERNAL  INTENTION 


recognised  as  God's  revelation  of  Himself  to  the 
world.  In  so  far  as  we  hold  ourselves  back  from 
a  communion  with  Christ  perfect  and  complete  as 
we  can  make  it,  something  in  us  must  die ;  for  He 
in  His  fulness  of  life  is  ready  for  us,  and  we  in  our 
need  of  life  are  so  pathetically  ready  for  Him. 
Now  and  unceasingly,  the  hour  strikes  afresh  for 
our  souls  to  achieve  their  destiny  in  Christ.  It  is 
the  supreme  business  of  every  soul  to  see  that 
at  not  a  single  striking  of  that  hour  shall  it  be 
possible  to  say,  in  regard  to  its  relationship  with 
the  appealing  Christ,  that  the  Christ  came  unto 
His  own,  and  His  own  received  Him  not. 


III. 


CHRIST  FORESEEN:  JOHN  THE 
BAPTIST. 

John  i.  19-34. 

HAVING  reached  thus  the  close  of  the 
introduction  to  his  Gospel,  John  turns 
himself,  or  is  just  on  the  point  of  turning  himself, 
to  the  actual  history  of  the  life-giving  Christ,  and 
stands  ready  to  launch  his  readers  forth  upon  the 
marvellous  tale.  He  has  stated  his  case,  so  to 
say ;  and  his  case  is  that  this  Christ,  of  whom  he 
is  going  to  speak,  is  the  Son  of  God,  the  Giver  of 
life  to  men ;  and  he  is  prepared,  now,  to  marshal 
the  facts  of  this  Christ's  human  life,  and  to  show 
how  in  those  facts  the  case,  as  he  has  stated  it,  finds 
its  support  and  its  proof.  With  his  readers,  the 
evangelist  stands  looking  clear  ahead  into  the  space 

through  which  they  are  to  take  their  long  flight. 

36 


JOHN  THE  BAPTIST 


37 


Yet  even  now,  something  arrests  him  for  a  few 
moments  as  he  is  eager  to  start  off  upon  his  re- 
cital :  a  newly-remembered  thought  lays  its  hand 
upon  him  and  bids  him  pause.  The  Christ  came 
to  bestow  the  true  life ;  but  the  hearts  of  men 
were  already  filled  with  a  life  which  was  not  the 
true ;  and  they  needed  to  be  recalled  from  the  life 
they  possessed,  to  be  emptied  of  the  life  which 
possessed  them,  before  they  could  be  receptive 
toward  the  true  life  Christ  brought.  And  there- 
fore John  lingers  for  a  few  verses  upon  the  great 
missionary  who  performed  this  preparatory  work — 
the  missionary  who,  great  as  he  was  and  great  as 
his  enterprise  may  have  been,  was  but  the  herald 
of  One  greater  than  himself,  of  One  destined  to 
a  greater  and  more  truly  redemptive  ministry  to 
the  world.  John  the  Evangelist  sets,  as  with  a 
few  bold  strokes,  the  picture  of  John  the  Baptist 
clear  before  our  eyes. 

John  the  Baptist  is  an  arresting  figure.  The 
outstanding  characteristic  in  the  man  himself  (as 
distinguished  from  his  message)  was  of  course  the 
utter  humility  which  enveloped  him,  his  pervading 


38 


CHRIST  FORESEEN 


consciousness  that,  although  he  was  the  first  in 
time,  he  was  but  the  second  in  rank  and  place, 
and  his  persistent  resolve  that  no  one  should  take 
him  for  other  than  he  was.  Something  pathetic 
— I  always  think  there  is — in  the  figure  of  this 
giant-man.  Crowds  flocking  to  him,  obdurate 
hearts  melting  at  his  word,  multitudes  looking  up 
to  him  as  to  the  only  divine  messenger  they  had 
ever  acknowledged — and  he  holds  them  all  at 
arm's  length.  "  I  am  the  voice  "  (only  the  voice) 
"  of  one  crying  in  the  wilderness.  Make  straight 
the  way  of  the  Lord."  "  In  the  midst  of  you 
standeth  one  whom  ye  know  not,  even  he  that 
Cometh  after  me,  the  latchet  of  whose  shoe  I  am 
not  worthy  to  unloose."  It  used  to  be  a  saying  in 
the  Jewish  schools  that  a  scholar  should  be  willing 
to  do  his  teacher  any  service,  except  the  unloosing 
of  his  sandaL  That  was  an  office  so  menial  that 
not  even  a  master,  honoured  as  he  might  be,  had 
a  right  to  expect  its  rendering.  But  this  man, 
towering  up  as  he  did  in  his  moral  greatness 
entitled,  if  any  one  could  be  entitled,  to  some- 
thing of  honour  for  the  austere  rectitude  of  his 
living — this  man  felt  himself  so  far  beneath  the 


JOHN  THE  BAPTIST 


39 


One  who  should  follow  that  he  shrank  from  doing 
Him  that  lowest  service,  not  because  he  considered 
it  too  mean  for  him,  but  because  even  for  that 
service  he  considered  himself  too  mean.  "  The 
latchet  of  whose  shoe  I  am  not  worthy  to  un- 
loose." John  cared  only  to  bring  the  people  up  to 
the  point  at  which  they  should  be  ready  for  the 
ministries  of  Christ,  and  then  he  would  slip  away : 
all  he  did  had  worth  and  value  in  his  own  eyes 
only  as  it  opened  the  door  for  the  Christ ;  and 
he  was  willing  to  stand  unseen  behind  the  door 
he  himself  had  opened,  and  to  be  forgotten  as  the 
Christ  passed  in.  His  influence  could  truly  live 
only  as  it  died  away,  and  the  influence  of  the 
Christ  held  sway  in  its  stead. 

The  lesson  of  it  holds  true  for  the  Church  in  all 
ages.  Every  religious  agency  that  works  on  us 
— every  religious  agency  wherewith  we  seek  to 
work  on  others — has  no  worth  except  as  it  is 
a  means  of  introduction  to  the  Christ.  All  the 
engagements  of  the  religious  life,  all  exercises  of 
worship,  all  holy  feelings  which  by  one  method  or 
by  another  may  be  produced  in  us,  have,  if  we 
take  them  rightly,  only  this  one  meaning — they 


40 


CHRIST  FORESEEN 


are  the  preface  to  the  coming  of  the  Christ 
Himself,  and  must  so  be  read.  They  do  their 
true  work  only  as  they  make  us  turn  expectantly 
towards  Him  as  He  comes.  The  one  phrase 
which  sums  up  the  true  life  is  this — the  union  of 
Christ  with  us  ;  and  all  spiritual  influences  find 
their  only  aim  in  heralding  that  union,  in  making 
it  possible,  in  preparing  the  way  for  the  advent  of 
the  Christ  Himself.  To  rest  in  the  mere  religious 
exercises  or  the  mere  religious  feelings  themselves, 
as  if  in  themselves  they  possessed  any  value  at 
all,  is  the  fallacy  by  which  men  are  not  seldom 
ensnared.  The  test  for  the  trial  of  all  these  things 
is  this — How  far  have  they  advanced  us  in  recep- 
tiveness  toward  Christ  ?  Have  they  been  fore- 
runners of  Him  ?  By  these  things,  was  the  way 
made  straight  for  His  approach  ?  Nothing,  how- 
ever religious  and  spiritual  it  may  appear,  is  of 
benefit  to  the  soul  unless  it  has  pointed  us  to 
Him  who  is  to  come  ;  and  every  religious  feeling 
of  ours,  every  religious  exercise  of  ours,  must 
lead  up  to  and  terminate  in,  and  be  itself  lost  and 
forgotten  in,  a  more  real  relationship  between  us 
and  Christ.    Religious  feeling,  religious  exercise, 


JOHN  THE  BAPTIST 


41 


cannot  be  the  light  or  the  Hfe  :  it  can  only  be  the 
witness,  the  proclamation  that  the  light  and  life 
are  at  hand.  By  all  spiritual  agencies  must  we  be 
led — by  all  spiritual  exercises  must  we  lead  others 
— to  One  mightier  than  all  else.  Well  to  have 
the  way  made  straight  and  clear;  but  the  pre- 
paration of  the  way  is  not  to  be  mistaken  for 
the  end  of  all.  Over  the  prepared  way  the 
Christ  must  come. 

The  outstanding  characteristic  in  the  Baptist's 
message  (as  distinguished  from  the  man  himself) 
was  that  it  was  a  preaching  of  repentance.  This 
evangelist,  indeed,  is  in  such  haste  to  get  on  to 
the  preaching  and  the  doing  of  the  Christ,  that  he 
tells  us  little  about  the  preaching  of  the  forerunner, 
except  that  he  proclaimed  himself  to  be  a  fore- 
runner and  a  forerunner  only.  But  elsewhere  the 
Baptist's  message  stands  out,  "  Repent  ye ;  for  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  is  at  hand."  And  although  it 
be  little  that  this  Gospel  records  concerning  John 
the  Baptist's  word,  it  is  not  without  purpose  that 
John  the  Apostle  sets  down  here  the  mention  of 
his  name  and  work.    As  the  Baptist  himself  was 


42 


CHRIST  FORESEEN 


the  forerunner  of  the  Christ  in  the  history  of  the 
world,  so,  in  the  history  of  every  soul,  must  the 
repentance  which  the  Baptist  preached  be  the  fore- 
runner of  the  life  which  Christ  came  to  bestow. 
The  Baptist  prepared  for  Christ,  the  Giver  of  the 
life  new  and  true,  by  preaching  repentance,  the 
giving  up  of  the  spirit  of  the  life  old  and  false. 
His  hearers  were  to  cut  themselves  loose  from 
their  past,  that  they  might  be  newly  started  upon 
their  future — to  empty  out  what  their  hearts  held, 
that  Christ  might  then  fill  their  hearts  with  the 
life  of  His  own.  "  Repent  ye " — that  was  the 
forerunner's  message.  He  gave  the  negative 
inspiration,  as  it  were,  under  which  they  might 
realise  the  wrong  of  their  past:  then,  unable  to 
give  the  positive  inspiration  under  which  their 
future  would  be  kept  right,  he  passed  them  on  to 
Him  in  whom  that  inspiration  of  right  had  come. 
"  I  can  but  make  you  realise  how  sinful  you 
have  been — but  behold  the  Lamb  of  God,  which 
taketh  away  the  sin  of  the  world  ! "  By  their 
repentance,  by  their  realisation  of  the  wrongness 
of  what  had  been,  were  they  to  make  ready  for 
acceptance  of  what  would  be.    There  must  be  the 


JOHN  THE  BAPTIST 


43 


deliberate  casting  away  of  the  old,  in  order  that 
the  new,  as  it  drew  near  in  Christ,  might  possess 
them  utterly. 

The  soul  which  would  relate  itself  truly  to  Christ 
must  make  its  deliberate  surrender  of  the  spirit 
whereby,  without  Christ,  it  has  been  possessed. 
Not  one  of  us  can  know  Christ's  baptism  of  the 
Holy  Ghost,  Christ's  baptism  of  the  spirit  of 
holiness,  until  in  the  depths  of  our  nature  we  have 
gone  through  John's  baptism  of  repentance.  Is 
repentance  only  for  gross  and  open  and  palpable 
transgression  ?  Has  the  word  scarcely  any  mean- 
ing for  those  whose  hands  and  hearts  have  not 
been  deeply  dyed  with  wrong?  Is  it  claimed  that, 
at  any  rate,  repentance  cannot  be  the  same  thing 
for  the  morally  respectable  as  for  those  who  have 
slipped  far  into  the  pit  and  must  have  a  long  and 
painful  climb  back  ?  It  is  essentially  the  same 
thing  for  all.  Repentance  is  not  a  sort  of  feeling, 
proportioned  in  quantity  to  the  quantity  of  sin  the 
repentant  one  has  committed  :  it  is  the  confession 
that  we  have  been  living  from  the  wrong  source, 
by  the  wrong  spirit,  that  the  spring  of  all  things 
in  us,  out  of  which  all  we  have  been  and  done  has 


44 


CHRIST  FORESEEN 


come,  has  not  been  the  true  spring  of  life.  And 
if  Christ  is  to  set  the  spring  of  true  life  within 
us,  to  be  Himself  the  spring  of  true  life  within 
us,  we  must  detach  ourselves  from  those  other 
springs  of  life  that  have  been  pouring  their  life 
into  the  channels  of  our  nature.  The  Christ-life 
can  take  hold  only  upon  natures  which  have  with 
deliberate  purpose  and  conscious  will  cleared 
themselves  free  from  all  other  hold.  Although  in 
the  Christ  the  kingdom  of  heaven  is  at  hand,  it 
can  only  take  up  its  rule  in  those  who  have 
repented  of  and  from  the  spirit  of  their  past.  It 
is  not  a  question  as  to  how  much  right  and  how 
much  wrong  we  have  performed.  With  the  Christ 
coming  to  us,  we  cannot  experience  the  seizure 
of  His  life  upon  us  till  we  acknowledge  that — 
whether  outwardly  right  or  wrong — much  of  our 
life  must  be  cast  aside  and  disowned  because  it  is 
not  from  Him  that  it  has  been  lived ;  and  His 
spirit  makes  us  only  when  every  other  spirit  has 
been  deliberately  thrust  away.  At  the  beginning 
of  our  discipleship  the  spirit  which  was  not  His  is 
to  be  renounced :  through  the  continuance  of  our 
discipleship,  as  spirits  which  are  not  His  enter  in 


JOHN  THE  BAPTIST 


45 


again  and  usurp  partial  control,  must  the  renuncia- 
tion be  repeatedly  re-made ;  and  to  one  and  all  of 
us,  till  we  be  perfect,  the  forerunner's  cry  must 
come,  "  Repent  ye  ;  for  the  kingdom  of  heaven  is 
at  hand." 

The  history  here  set  down  must  be  the  history 
of  the  experience  of  the  soul.  First  the  Baptist, 
then  the  Christ.  If  it  be  an  ancient  record,  it  is  a 
modern  necessity  too.  Only  within  cleared  and 
receptive  natures  can  the  life  of  Christ  take  up  an 
uninterrupted  reign.  If  it  be  indeed  as  life  that 
Christ  comes.  He  must  have  the  undivided  field. 
For  life  is  all. 


IV. 


CHRIST  SEEN  IN  TOUCH  WITH  DIFFER- 
ENT HUMAN  TYPES:  THE  FIRST 
CALLINGS. 


HE  earliest  occasion,  noted  by  John's  Gospel, 


A  on  which  Jesus  manifested  before  men  the 
divineness  that  was  in  Him,  is  the  occasion  of  His 
attachment  of  the  earliest  disciples  to  His  cause. 
The  narrative  of  the  Temptation  finds  no  place  in 
this  evangelist's  account,  for  a  reason  which  it  is 
perhaps  not  difficult  to  conjecture.  He  is  writing, 
one  has  carefully  to  bear  in  mind,  with  the  object 
of  displaying  the  action  of  the  divine  Christ 
among  and  upon  men,  so  that  men,  as  they 
ponder  over  the  story,  may  realise  how  divine  He 
was ;  and  the  Temptation  of  Christ  had  been  a 
thing  that  took  place  in  secluded  quietude,  unseen 


John  i.  35-51. 


CHRIST  IN  TOUCH  WITH  HUMAN  TYPES  47 


of  any  human  eye.  Had  John  recounted  the 
facts,  the  rejoinder  might  have  sprung  upon  him, 
"  But  this  thing  of  which  you  speak  has  no  points 
of  contact  with  human  Hfe :  it  took  place,  if  it 
took  place  at  all,  away  from  any  who  could  bear 
witness  to  it :  if  you  want  to  convince  us,  tell  us 
something  which  this  divine  Christ,  as  you  hold 
Him  to  be,  w^orked  openly  before  the  face  of  man. 
Speak  to  us,  not  of  something  which,  like  this 
Temptation  of  His,  took  place  only  within  Himself, 
but  of  something  which  made  others  recognise 
His  power."  And,  as  if  anticipating  such  a 
demand,  John  begins  his  cumulative  testimony  to 
the  wondrous  life  that  was  in  Christ  by  showing 
how  men  of  different  temperament,  of  opposite 
make,  found,  as  they  came  into  contact  with  Him, 
that  He  brought  out  of  Himself  just  that  for  which 
their  nature  and  disposition  and  circumstance 
called.  Notice  first " — he  appears  to  say — "  how, 
as  men  of  utterly  diverse  moods  passed  within  His 
range,  this  Jesus  touched  at  once  the  heart  of 
each,  had  the  one  necessary  word  prepared, 
established  immediately  an  abiding  connection 
between  Himself  and    them.    Surely  He  who 


48  CHRIST  SEEN  IN  TOUCH 


mastered  and  satisfied  many  varieties  of  tempera- 
ment thus  must  have  had  in  Him  something  that 
lifted  Him  above  the  race  of  common  men  !  " 

First  of  all,  John  shows  us  Jesus  in  contact 
with  two  men  who  were  following  Him  under 
the  constraint  of  some  mysterious  spell  which  in 
all  probability  they  would  have  been  unable  to 
explain,  had  explanation  been  asked.  The 
Baptist,  seeing  Christ  pass  by,  had  repeated 
the  exclamation  which  had  once  before  been 
forced  from  him  as  the  sacred  Presence  drew 
near — "  Behold  the  Lamb  of  God  ! "  And  two 
of  the  Baptist's  disciples — John  the  evangelist 
himself  being  almost  certainly  one  of  them — 
hearing  their  leader's  utterance  of  adoration, 
and  turning  to  look  upon  the  One  of  whom  he 
spoke,  had  been  mysteriously  magnetised,  and 
had  left  the  old  leader  for  the  new.  Under 
vague  impulses  they  followed,  knowing  not  why. 
Here  was  an  atmosphere  that  gripped  them. 
Here  was  a  strange  music  to  which  they  were 
compelled  to  adjust  the  movement  and  rhythm  of 
their  steps.    But  Christ  had  the   fitting  word 


WITH  DIFFERENT  HUMAN  TYPES  49 


whereby  their  vague  following  might  be  changed 
to  a  following  of  conscious  and  deliberate 
purpose.  "  And  Jesus  turned,  and  beheld  them 
following,  and  saith  unto  them,  What  seek 
ye  ? "  If  they  were  going  to  follow,  they  must 
look  into  their  own  minds  and  discover  what, 
by  their  following,  they  hoped  to  obtain :  out  of 
this  adherence  of  theirs,  which  was  as  yet  little 
else  than  a  walking  in  their  sleep,  they  must 
rouse  themselves  to  an  adherence  whose  motive 
they  could  express,  an  adherence  which  sprang 
out  of  the  awakened  will :  Christ  must  have  a 
deliberate,  purposeful  discipleship  from  them,  if 
disciples  they  would  be.    "  What  seek  ye  ?  " 

In  that  the  first  gleam  of  divine  loftiness  in 
the  Christ  shines  out.  How  many  leaders  have 
there  not  been  who,  for  the  sake  of  a  following, 
would  receive  followers  upon  almost  any  terms  ? 
How  many  movements  have  there  not  been 
whose  devotees  were  swayed  simply  by  some 
spell  which  the  movement  wove  round  their 
unthinking  minds,  and  whose  guiding  spirits 
were  content  that  so  it  should  be  ?  And  indeed, 
for  some  purposes  and  from  some  points  of  view, 
4 


so  CHRIST  SEEN  IN  TOUCH 


followers  who  are  mastered  by  a  magic  power 
they  have  not  troubled  to  analyse  or  reason  out 
are  among  the  best  followers  that  the  leader  of 
a  great  cause  could  have;  for  they  will  be  un- 
tormented  by  doubts,  carried  by  mere  force 
of  enthusiasm  over  many  difficulties  whereat 
thinkers  would  be  brought  to  sudden  halt.  But 
not  so  would  Christ  have  His  w^ork  be  done. 
They  who  followed  must  know  what  they 
sought.  And  in  this  driving  in  upon  themselves 
of  the  spell-bound  disciples,  in  this  rigid  examina- 
tion of  an  offered  homage,  in  this  determination 
that  any  devotion  to  Him  must  be  able  to  give 
an  account  of  itself,  the  Christ  grows  great. 

But  will  any  reader  of  the  Gospel  say  that 
this  was  merely  a  just  cautiousness  —  worth 
noticing,  perhaps,  but  nothing  so  very  remarkable 
after  all  ?  "  Show  us  something  more  than  this, 
if  you  want  us  to  believe  that  your  Christ  was 
as  great  as  you  say."  Well  then,  John  shows  us 
next  how  Jesus  said  the  one  right  word  to  a 
man  of  utterly  contrasted  type,  the  Simon  Peter 
who  was  afterwards  to  play  a  part  which  swung 


WITH  DIFFERENT  HUMAN  TYPES  51 


backward  and  forward  so  often  between  the 
noble  and  the  mean.  Brought  into  the  presence 
of  the  new  Teacher  by  Andrew  his  brother,  we 
can  imagine  how  he  would  let  himself  be  carried 
there — with  eager  curiosity  in  him,  swayed  by 
alternating  moods  of  willingness  and  unwilling- 
ness to  believe  that  there  was  something  in  this 
matter  which  his  brother  had  taken  up,  all 
tumultuous  within  as  it  was  his  nature  to  be. 
"  And  Jesus  looked  upon  him,  and  said,  Thou 
art  Simon  the  son  of  John :  thou  shalt  be  called 
Cephas  (which  is  by  interpretation,  Peter)." 
And  Peter  of  course  means  rock.  This  man, 
then,  Jesus  felt  that  He  could  transform.  Rock 
— about  the  last  thing,  everybody  would  have 
said,  with  which  this  nature  had  any  affinity ! 
Like  the  torrent,  rather,  that  leaps  and  careers 
wildly  down  the  face  of  the  rock,  impetuous, 
beating  itself  madly  against  one  obstacle  after 
another,  no  calmness  in  it,  no  stability  like  that 
which  belongs  to  the  rock  over  which  it  takes 
its  headlong  way !  But  calmness,  stedfastness, 
immovable  strength,  like  that  whereof  the  great 
rock  is  the  symbol — that  was  what  Christ  meant 


U.  Or  lit  U3. 


52  CHRIST  SEEN  IN  TOUCH 

to  produce  in  this  undisciplined  soul.  Never 
mind  what  he  is  now — the  Christ  saw  past  all 
the  vacillations  and  the  follies,  and  discerned 
how  at  length,  through  what  He  Himself  would 
do  upon  this  headstrong,  unreliable  spirit,  faith- 
fulness and  apostolic  strength  should  be  born 
therein.  Whatever  he  might  be  now,  it  was 
Peter,  the  Rock,  he  should  be  at  last. 

And  the  greatness  that  spoke  in  that  word — 
who  can  measure  it?  Many  leaders  know  how 
to  use  men ;  but  what  leader  has  ever  possessed 
this  calm  consciousness  that  he  could  so  transform 
a  man — swing  him  right  round,  as  it  were,  so 
that  he  faces  precisely  the  opposite  way  to  that 
he  faced  before?  Now,  one  can  almost  hear 
John  triumphantly  questioning,  does  not  the 
Christ  grow  before  your  eyes  into  a  more 
wondrous  exaltation  still? 

Through  the  other  two  callings  which  John 
records,  the  same  readiness  of  the  Christ — the 
fitness  of  His  spirit  for  all  men  and  all  circum- 
stances— shows  itself  in  other  ways.  This  Jesus, 
who  was  prepared  with  the  one  right  word  when 


WITH  DIFFERENT  HUMAN  TYPES  53 


men  came  to  Him,  possessed  also  the  power  to 
win  whom  He  would,  to  make  whom  He  would 
realise  that  they  ought  to  be  His.  This  perfect 
Leader  is  fitted  to  all ;  but  He  is  able  also  to 
compel  an  admission  of  His  fitness.  It  is  by 
calm  authority  that  Philip,  the  next  disciple,  is 
secured.  "Jesus  saith  unto  him.  Follow  me." 
This  Leader,  then,  appeals  to  all :  it  is  not  only 
souls  which  have  by  some  special  experience,  or 
through  some  particular  element  in  their  con- 
stitution, been  attracted  to  Him,  whom  He  can 
touch ;  but  all  who  hear  His  word  recognise — 
whether  or  no  they  choose  to  obey — that  it  is  a 
word  they  ought  to  receive.  Greater  still  thereby 
does  the  Christ  become.  Other  teachers  have 
their  schools,  their  parties,  their  special  make 
of  scholar:  it  is  within  their  own  well-defined 
limits  that  they  are  strong,  and  there  alone: 
you  can  draw  the  border-line  and  say  that 
beyond  that  their  rule  does  not  extend.  But 
this  Jesus  has  in  Himself  an  authority  before 
which  all  know  that  it  becomes  them  to  bow 
down.  And  so  He  leaves  all  others  yet  further 
behind. 


54  CHRIST  SEEN  IN  TOUCH 


The  doubter,  and  Christ's  method  of  dealing 
with  him,  stands  last.  "  Can  any  good  thing 
come  out  of  Nazareth  ? "  Nathanael  had  asked. 
But,  since  there  had  been  no  malice  in  his  doubt, 
and  since  he  had  been  open-minded  enough, 
when  invited  to  come  and  see,  to  act  on  the 
advice  and  come,  Jesus  meets  him,  not  with  any 
word  of  blame,  but  rather  with  a  word  of  com- 
mendation for  the  true  enquiring  spirit  he  had 
shown.  His  questioning  had  been  the  question- 
ing, not  of  obstinacy  nor  of  superciliousness  nor 
of  an  idle  mind :  in  his  readiness  to  come  and 
see  he  had  shown  that,  if  there  was  doubt,  there 
was  at  least  no  guile ;  and  for  him  there  was  the 
smile  of  welcome,  with  not  the  slightest  utterance 
of  reproof  to  impair  its  charm. 

Of  the  most  scrutinising  enquiry,  of  the  deepest 
probing  man  could  bring  to  bear,  Christ  had  no 
fear.  Great  must  a  leader  be  if  he  is  willing  to 
submit  himself  and  his  claims  to  the  scrutiny 
of  all  who,  when  they  would  know  whether  there 
is  any  good  thing  in  him,  come  and  see.  The 
most  will  have  their  reserves,  their  secrets  into 
which  they  would  prefer  that  none  should  pry, 


WITH  DIFFERENT  HUMAN  TYPES  55 


lest  authority  should  be  weakened  by  the  things 
revealed  ;  and  not  too  closely  must  questioning 
disciples  make  their  examination :  not  too  deeply 
must  they  probe.  The  veil  must  not  be  raised 
too  far.  There  are  shadows  which  must  not 
be  searched  through  by  a  too  brilliant  light  of 
enquiry.  Disciples  must  not  walk  over  these 
dark  places  bearing  a  flaming  torch  in  their 
hands.  But  this  Christ,  knowing  that  one 
approaches  intending  to  sift  His  evidences  and 
His  claims,  so  far  as  may  be,  to  the  depths, 
keeps  him  not  off,  but  welcomes  him,  accepting 
his  very  resolve  to  sift  and  search  as  a  token  of 
the  true  heart  he  bears. 

So  does  John  set  forth  the  Christ  with  these 
men  of  many  natures  round  Him :  so  does  he 
paint  in  the  picture  of  His  greatness  with  touch 
after  touch,  showing  how  for  one  and  all  Christ 
could  bring  forth  from  what  His  own  life 
contained  just  that  whereof  the  life  of  one  and 
all  stood  in  need.  And  indeed,  it  is  still  one  of 
the  greatest  miracles  wrought  in  our  world  by 
Christ's  power,  that,  be  the  moods  of  men  what 


56    CHRIST  IN  TOUCH  WITH  HUMAN  TYPES 


they  may,  that  which  comes  forth  from  the  Christ 
IS  sufficient  for  them  all.  There  lies  no  strange- 
ness between  Christ  and  any  type  of  human 
soul — save  the  strangeness  made  by  the  soul's 
refusal  to  be  brought  near  and  set  at  rest.  Some 
of  us  are  like  the  spell-mastered  disciples,  some  of 
us  like  Peter,  or  Philip,  or  Nathanael :  rather,  each 
of  us  is  sometimes  one  and  sometimes  another, 
passing  from  disposition  to  disposition,  from  mood 
to  mood :  yet,  the  influence  of  the  Christ  upon  us 
is  not  a  medicine  which  avails  for  one  disease 
and  is  powerless  over  the  rest,  but  is  the  healing 
and  redemption  for  them  all.  What  must  the 
life  be  that  answers  so  completely  to  all  phases 
of  life  in  man?  Surely  it  must  be  the  life  for 
which  man  is  made,  the  authoritative  revelation 
and  the  free  offering  of  the  life  which  man  was 
destined  to  live ;  and  He  who  has  brought  it  so 
abundantly  within  our  reach  must  be  Himself 
the  light  and  the  life  of  men. 


V. 


CHRIST  SEEN  AS  SUPREME  OVER 
NATURE:  THE  EARLIEST  MIRACLE. 

John  ii.  i-ii. 

T  TAVING  thus  shown  how  the  divine  life 
in  Christ  had  the  power,  as  one  would 
expect  it  to  have  if  it  were  indeed  divine,  of 
adapting  its  ministries  to  the  various  natures  of  the 
various  men  who  approached  it,  John  proceeds  to 
show  how  the  divine  life  in  Christ  had  power, 
as  one  would  also  expect  it  to  have  if  it  were 
indeed  divine,  over  material  nature  too.  Building 
up  the  image  of  his  great  Christ  before  his  readers' 
eyes,  the  evangelist  wants  them  to  see  now  how 
while  His  heart  had  in  it  that  which  mastered 
and  answered  to  the  hearts  of  men,  His  hand  also 
was  able  to  lay  itself  in  quiet  sovereignty  upon  the 
forces  of  nature  and  compel  them  to  do  His  will. 

57 


58    CHRIST  SEEN  SUPREME  OVER  NATURE 


Without,  as  within  —  in  regions  where  Nature 
seemed  to  keep  herself  secluded  from  intrusion  of 
any  power  man  could  bring  to  bear,  as  well  as  in 
the  more  accessible  regions  of  human  disposition 
and  character  —  everywhere  John  intends  his 
readers  to  behold  Christ^s  influences  ranging ;  and 
so  "this  beginning  of  his  signs"  which  Jesus  did 
in  Cana  of  Galilee  occupies  the  next  place  in  the 
record  of  His  life. 

A  miracle,  then,  is  what  John  has  now  to  record. 
And  yet,  one  misses  one  of  the  most  striking 
points  about  John's  recording  of  it  unless  one 
observes  how  careful  he  is  that  Christ  shall  not 
be  looked  upon  as  a  miracle-worker  merely,  as 
one  ready  to  provide  a  display  of  the  marvellous 
simply  for  the  sake  of  doing  it  or  in  order  to 
smite  the  onlookers  into  wide-eyed  and  entranced 
admiration  of  His  skill.  The  purpose  which  John 
had  in  view  in  the  recital  of  this  miracle  may 
indeed  be  said  to  have  been  twofold — to  show 
how  Christ  possessed,  as  a  divine  Christ  would 
possess,  the  power  of  working  a  miracle,  and  to 
show  also  how  Christ  held  the  power  under  strict 


THE  EARLIEST  MIRACLE 


59 


restraint,  affording  thereby  a  still  further  proof  of 
the  divineness  which  inspired  all  He  did. 

For  "  when  the  wine  failed,  the  mother  of  Jesus 
saith  unto  him.  They  have  no  wine."  It  was  her 
expectation,  evidently,  that  Christ  would  seize  the 
opportunity  of  displaying  to  the  assembled  guests 
the  power  which  she  must  have  known  Him  to 
possess :  His  life  had  not  gone  on  until  now 
without  affording  her,  through  a  thousand  ways, 
some  glimpses  into  the  wondrous  secrets  at  its 
depths ;  and  here,  at  length,  was  the  hour  for  the 
manifesting  of  His  glory — the  hour  for  which  she 
had  waited  through  thirty  years.  "  They  have  no 
wine  " — "  here  is  the  door  opened  through  which 
the  light  that  is  in  Thee  may  shine  forth  and 
bring  all  these  people  to  their  knees ! "  Surely 
this  chance  was  not  to  be  missed.  Perfectly 
natural,  of  course.  Who,  so  keenly  as  the  mother 
of  Jesus,  would  long  for  men  to  know  what  He 
was  and  what  He  could  perform  ?  Here  is  the 
true  throbbing  of  the  true  mother-heart. 

And  yet  it  was  not  thus,  not  with  any  inten- 
tion of  forcing  Himself  upon  those  who  saw,  that 
Jesus  would  set  His  power  to  its  work.    "  And 


6o    CHRIST  SEEN  SUPREME  OVER  NATURE 


Jesus  saith  unto  her,  Woman,  what  have  I  to  do 
with  thee  ?  mine  hour  is  not  yet  come."  Perhaps 
it  is  worth  while  to  say — lest  difficulty  should  be 
felt  upon  the  point — that  the  phrase  really  carries 
no  such  sound  of  harshness  as  the  English  trans- 
lation suggests ;  and  the  sternness  which  one  is 
apt  to  read  into  it  is  not,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
present  in  it  at  all.  "  Woman  "  was  quite  a  usual 
method  of  address,  and  carried  not  the  faintest 
trace  of  disrespect.  "  What  have  I  to  do  with 
thee  ?  "  is  perhaps  not  the  best  expression  for 
conveying  the  point  of  Christ's  utterance.  "  What 
is  it  to  me  and  thee  ? "  would  be  a  more  exact 
rendering ;  and,  adopting  that,  one  perceives  at 
once  what  Christ's  rebuke,  so  far  as  it  was  a 
rebuke,  meant.  "  This  power  that  dwells  in  me 
— what  is  it  to  me  and  what  is  it  to  you? 
To  me  a  different  thing  altogether  from  what 
it  is  to  you.  To  you  it  is  the  means  through 
which  honour,  fame,  reverence,  are  to  be  won 
from  applauding  crowds :  to  me  it  is  a  far  more 
restrained  and  holy  thing."  The  Christ  would  not 
employ  for  any  such  purpose  of  notoriety  the 
might  He  had  at  His   command :   indeed,  one 


THE  EARLIEST  MIRACLE  61 


knows  how  through  the  whole  of  His  life  He 
stedfastly  refused  to  do  so :  He  never  built  up 
a  stage  and  arranged  the  figures  and  invited  an 
audience  and  then  dazzled  it  by  an  exhibition 
of  miracle;  but  whenever  miracle  was  wrought, 
it  was  simply  because  divineness,  with  those 
particular  circumstances  around  it,  could  not  do 
otherwise  than  it  did.  The  wonder  is  not  that 
Christ  did  so  many  mighty  works,  but  that,  being 
what  He  was,  the  sum  of  them  is  so  small.  Yet 
it  is  no  wonder,  after  all ;  for  so,  surely,  would 
divineness,  in  its  calm  consciousness  of  power,  and 
in  its  unfailing  remembrance  of  the  eternal  ends 
for  which  alone  power  must  be  employed — so, 
surely,  would  divineness  be  severely  restrained. 
When  Christ  did  miracles,  it  was  because  then 
and  there  the  miracles  were  the  natural  things  for 
divineness  to  do.  Called  on  for  signs,  just  in 
order  to  prove  that  He  could  show  signs.  His 
attitude  towards  the  demand  was  always  the 
attitude  He  showed  to  His  mother  in  her  im- 
portunity here,  "  Mine  hour  is  not  yet  come." 

With  the  acceptance  of  His  rebuke  by  His 


62    CHRIST  SEEN  SUPREME  OVER  NATURE 


mother,  it  became  possible  for  the  Christ  to  do 
what,  when  she  came  with  her  eager  and  un- 
disciplined desire,  He  had  to  refuse.  Realising 
that  He  was  not  so  much  her  son  as  her  Lord, 
that  His  power  could  not  be  at  her  disposal  but 
must  be  directed  as  He  Himself  should  ordain,  she 
turned  in  her  new  submissiveness  to  the  servants, 
saying  to  them,  "  Whatsoever  he  saith  unto  you, 
do  it."  The  dream  of  a  son  applauded  by  this 
company,  set  on  a  pinnacle  of  fame,  the  country 
ringing  with  that  story  of  the  miracle  he  had 
worked — that  dream  had  melted  away.  He  was 
Lord  now ;  and  all,  rather  than  dictate  to  Him, 
must  set  themselves  simply  to  do  His  will.  And 
with  the  dawning  of  that  mood  upon  His  mother's 
heart,  Christ's  hour,  which  had  not  yet  come 
when  she  presented  her  somewhat  imperious 
claim,  arrived ;  and  He  could  do  what  the  divine- 
ness  in  Him  prompted  Him  to  do  for  this 
company  in  its  need.  His  power,  which  would 
not  wake  when  it  was  called  upon  by  His  mother's 
mere  ambition  for  its  display,  wakened  when  she 
had  accepted  the  fact  that  the  divine  authority 
in  Him  must  be  left  free  to  work  out  its  will. 


THE  EARLIEST  MIRACLE 


63 


One  has  to  remember  that  the  whole  impression 
of  the  miracle  came  upon  the  mother  of  Jesus 
rather  than  upon  any  one  else.  There  is  no  hint 
even  that  the  bulk  of  the  company  knew  of  the 
miracle  having  been  wrought :  the  servants,  w^ho 
filled  and  drew  from  the  waterpots,  of  course  were 
aware ;  and  afterwards,  doubtless,  the  thing  would 
be  noised  abroad ;  but  the  lesson  of  the  whole 
incident,  at  the  time  of  its  happening,  was  a 
lesson  for  Mary  first  of  all.  All  power  in  the 
Christ — she  was  wholly  right  as  to  that ;  but  that 
her  very  appeal  to  Christ,  made  as  it  was  in  the 
wrong  spirit  and  with  undisciplined  eagerness,  shut 
up,  rather  than  opened,  the  outflowing  of  His 
power — that  was  the  truth  which,  out  of  the 
situation,  her  mind  had  to  seize.  The  water  was 
turned  into  wine  when  she  had  realised  that  Christ 
must  be  left  to  grapple  with  the  case  as  to 
Himself  seemed  best. 

It  is  fitting  that  a  divine  Christ  should  so  guard 
the  manifestation  of  His  might,  bestowing  it  only 
upon  those  in  whom  the  meet  spirit  is  dwelling ; 
and  so  with  the  divine  Christ  will  it  always  be. 
He  turns  all  lifers  water  into  wine,  enriches  with 


64    CHRIST  SEEN  SUPREME  OVER  NATURE 


inspiring  and  quickening  quality  all  the  experiences 
whereof  we  have  to  partake,  when  we  come  to 
Him — not  with  that  cry  which  seems  to  rise  so 
often  to  our  lips,  "  If  Thou  art  indeed  the  Christ, 
this  is  surely  the  hour  when  Thou  shouldest  prove 
Thyself  by  the  revelation  of  Thy  power "  (for  is 
not  that  very  often  the  spirit  of  our  prayer  to 
Him  ?) — but  simply  with  the  desire  that  somehow, 
as  He  will,  the  divineness  in  Him  may  rule  the 
situation  in  which  we  find  ourselves,  make  the 
end  of  it  to  be  what  He  shall  choose.  There  will 
be  no  stint  in  anything  that  makes  life's  feast, 
so  long  as  we  are  seeking,  not  that  Christ  should 
every  moment  be  doing  some  transcendent  miracle 
for  us,  but  that  He,  because  He  is  so  great,  shall 
have  His  way. 

To  those  who  are  of  a  spirit  so  submissive, 
all  things  grow  transformed.  Our  demand  is  so 
often,  "  Because  He  is  the  Christ,  this  ought  to 
be  different  for  me,  and  He  should  make  life 
larger  here  and  richer  there — it  would  be  so  easy 
to  believe  then  !  "  To  that  there  can  be  but  one 
reply — "  Mine  hour  is  not  yet  come."  But  when 
we  gather  all  our  faculties  together  in  face  of  our 


THE  EARLIEST  MIRACLE 


65 


life — our  servants  as  they  are — and  say  to  them, 
"  This  life  by  which  you  are  faced  Christ  has  to 
deal  with :  whatever  He  saith  unto  you,  do  it 
then  He  does  the  miracle,  and  then  the  wine  of 
life  is  abundant  and  rich.  Christ's  wonders  are 
done  for  those  who  prescribe  no  wonders  to  Him, 
but  care  only  that  He,  in  His  divineness,  shall 
somehow,  through  His  rule  over  all  things,  make 
all  things  to  be  divine.  Keeping  that  spirit  in  us, 
through  richer  and  ever  richer  transformations  life 
must  pass  :  whatever  water  of  experience,  so  to  say, 
any  hour  or  year  brings  us,  we  shall  find,  as  we 
draw  off  the  results  of  it,  that  it  has  become  wine 
of  the  best ;  and,  so  far  from  life's  inspiration  to 
us  growing  feebler  with  the  growing  number  of 
our  years,  we  shall  be  constrained  to  declare  with 
added  emphasis,  as  each  year  is  added  to  the  sum, 
that  the  best  wine  has  been  kept  until  now. 


5 


VI. 


CHRIST  SEEN  AS  AUTHORITATIVE: 
THE  CLEANSING  OF  THE  TEMPLE. 

John  ii.  13-17. 

73  Y  His  cleansing  of  the  Temple,  as  these 
-L-'  verses  record  it,  Jesus  stepped  on  at  once 
to  an  impressive  and  unequivocal  assertion  of 
authority,  and  at  the  commencement  of  His 
public  ministry  in  Judsea  made  clear,  without 
any  hesitancies  or  experiments,  the  line  He  was 
going  to  take  and  keep.  Here  at  Jerusalem,  in 
the  very  central  place  of  the  nation's  religious  life, 
amid  surroundings  which  would  surely  have  given 
pause  to  any  reformer  not  quite  assured  of  his 
mission  or  of  himself,  Jesus  throws  down  His 
challenge  to  the  world  and  announces  Himself 
as  One  to  whom  the  established  order  of  things 
counts  for  nothing  at  all,  as  One  who  dares  to  lay 

66 


THE  CLEANSING  OF  THE  TEMPLE  67 


His  hand  in  reproof  and  correction  upon  anything 
He  held  unworthy,  however  consecrated  by  usage 
it  might  be.  His  judgment  as  to  the  right  of 
things — that  is  what  it  comes  to — was  supreme 
over  the  judgment  of  all  others  :  the  ecclesiastical 
rulers  might  permit  this  desecration  of  the  sacred 
precincts,  find  excuse  for  it,  justify  it  in  one  way 
or  another ;  but  that  w^eighed  not  at  all  against 
His  own  consciousness  of  what  was  fitting  in  His 
Father's  house ;  and  in  this,  as  in  all  other  things, 
Jesus  felt  assured  that  His  judgment  was  just. 
Without  temporising,  without  even  a  glance  at 
what  might  be  said  upon  the  other  side  of  the 
question.  He  suits  His  action  to  His  own  first 
sense  of  what  ought  to  be. 

There  was  in  Christ,  then,  nothing  of  the 
reformer  who,  at  the  beginning  of  his  work,  cal- 
culates the  effect  which  will  be  produced  by  this 
possible  course  or  by  the  other  possible  course, 
sets  himself  with  something  of  uncertainty  to 
the  task  lying  before  him,  wonders  what,  under 
the  circumstances,  may  be  the  best  thing  to  do. 
There  is  no  consideration  with  the  view  of  taking 


68    CHRIST  SEEN  AS  AUTHORITATIVE 


the  line  of  least  resistance.  Who  of  human 
workers  ever  feels  so  sure  that  the  spirit  of 
Absolute  Right  is  in  him  as  to  throw  himself 
without  possibility  of  retreat  upon  the  first  course 
the  mind  suggests  ?  There  comes  a  time,  it  is 
true,  when  enthusiasm  for  a  great  cause  so 
develops  in  and  possesses  the  reformer's  soul,  that 
he  is  raised  above  considerations  of  consequence 
and  commits  himself  for  a  final  effort  to  that 
which  he  thinks  the  best.  But  that  is  a  different 
thing.  Christ,  with  no  great  cause,  recognised 
by  others  as  a  great  cause,  given  into  His 
keeping,  with  no  cause  at  all  except  the  cause 
which  His  own  pure  heart  originated,  feels  within 
Himself  that  He  is  going  to  do  the  one  thing 
Heaven  must  approve,  that  no  consideration  could 
alter  His  judgment  of  the  matter  nor  any  voice 
say  to  Him  one  word  whereby  the  thing  would 
be  set  in  different  light  It  is  not  enthusiasm  at 
all,  in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the  word,  that  impels 
the  Christ  to  His  work  :  one  feels  immediately 
how  incongruously,  as  applied  to  Him,  the  word 
rings.  From  the  beginning  His  consciousness 
was  the  consciousness  of  Absolute  Right,  quietly 


THE  CLEANSING  OF  THE  TEMPLE  69 


and  inexorably  guiding  will  and  lips  and 
hand. 

To  that  one  has  to  add — as  still  further 
separating  the  Christ  from  all  others  who  have  set 
themselves  to  grapple  with  abuses  and  to  right 
the  wrong — that  nothing  of  self-doubt  as  to  His 
own  fitness  for  the  work  He  had  to  do  ever 
touched  His  mind.  The  narrative,  as  John 
recounts  it,  shows  us  the  Christ  standing  in 
untroubled  consciousness  of  perfect  harmony  with 
God :  it  is  "  my  Father's  house "  He  calls  the 
Temple  He  is  purifying ;  and  the  note  of 
personal  aloofness  from  all  wrong  is  unmistakable 
and  clear.  "  My  Father's  house."  "  I  dwell  in  a 
different  world  from  yours.  My  heart  and  God's 
be;at  together."  The  reformers  of  earth  perform 
their  tasks  with  the  sense  of  unworthiness  tor- 
menting them,  with  the  cry  "  Who  am  I  that  this 
mission  should  be  mine  ? "  ever  breaking  from 
their  lips  :  yea,  we  hold  them  worthier  so  far  as 
they  hold  themselves  unworthy ;  but  Christ  had 
no  part  in  self-reproach  such  as  theirs.  As  One 
who,  through  His  own  purity,  had  the  right  to  do 
it,  He  drives  the  profaners  forth.    From  His  own 


70    CHRIST  SEEN  AS  AUTHORITATIVE 

soul  no  cloud  is  flung  upon  the  relations  between 
Him  and  the  Father  whose  house  He  takes  under 
His  charge.  The  assurance  of  unimpaired  recti- 
tude speaks  and  acts  in  Christ. 

So  John  shows  us  how  Jesus,  at  the  com- 
mencement of  His  ministry,  took  the  decisive 
stand,  stretched  His  claim  for  Himself  to  its  full 
compass,  entered  upon  no  trials,  no  experiments, 
but  once  for  all  decided  upon  His  course,  though 
the  taking  of  it  involved  a  final  challenge  to 
the  world  and  a  final  break  with  the  recognised 
authorities  before  whom  all  bowed  down.  The 
reason  for  thus  setting  into  the  forefront  the 
absoluteness  of  Christ's  decision,  the  unwaver- 
ing character  of  Christ's  consciousness  of  Right 
and  Truth,  is  easily  to  be  discerned.  John's 
readers  are  to  see,  as  they  pass  on  through  the 
story  that  has  yet  to  be  written,  how  it  justifies 
Jesus  in  the  stand  He  takes.  Divineness  would  of 
a  surety  thus  declare  itself — would  thus  throw  out 
a  claim  which  the  future  time  would  test ;  and 
the  test  of  the  future  time  would  but  prove  the 
validity  of  the  claim.    Let  it  be  considered,  then, 


THE  CLEANSING  OF  THE  TEMPLE  71 


as  the  coming  pages  are  scanned,  whether  One 
who  at  the  outset  of  His  ministry  felt  so  sure 
that  He  perceived  the  only  right  course  before 
Him  and  so  certain  that  He  possessed  unimpaired 
Right  within — and  who  ever  lived  up  to  the  claim 
He  thus  made — whether  such  an  One  must  not 
be  indeed  the  Christ,  the  Son  of  the  living  God. 
He  knew  the  one  thing  that  Absolute  Right 
dictated,  and  that  in  these  early  days :  others 
know  it  not  till  the  education  of  time  has  made 
them  wise — their  understanding  comes  to  them 
through  the  practice  and  the  experience  of  years : 
how  could  Christ  have  known  it,  and  been  so 
reliant  upon  His  knowledge,  except  through  a 
touch  of  God  upon  Him  which  has  fallen  upon 
none  else  ?  He  claimed  a  communion  with 
God  unspoilt  by  the  slightest  marring  of  sin : 
others  claim  no  such  communion  as  that :  if 
they  did,  you  would  soon  find  them  out :  how 
could  Christ  claim  it,  and  be  afterwards  justi- 
fied in  His  claim,  unless  it  v/ere  through  a  rich- 
ness of  divine  life  utterly  unique  ?  It  is  as  if 
John  held  up  Jesus  before  us  daring  all  criticism 
from  the  outset,  offering  His  utter  challenge  to 


72    CHRIST  SEEN  AS  AUTHORITATIVE 

men,  and  then  said  to  us,  "  Now  read  the  rest, 
and  see  whether  you  can  find  mistake  in  anything 
He  did,  the  faintest  lapse  from  perfectness  in 
anything  the  records  tell.  Who  must  He  be  ?  " 
At  the  very  start  of  His  ministry  among  those 
whom  He  knew  to  be  hostile,  Jesus  dares  and 
ventures  all.  He  gives  them,  as  it  were,  every 
advantage  for  their  campaign — supplies  them,  in 
the  earliest  revelation  of  His  spirit,  with  a  weapon 
which,  should  any  weak  places  be,  they  will  be 
able  to  use  against  Him  by  and  by. 

The  claim  of  perfect  harmony  with  goodness 
and  with  God  implied  in  Christ's  stern  expulsion 
from  the  Temple  of  the  intruding  presences,  is  a 
claim  which  every  soul  must  somehow  examine 
and  test,  if  it  is  to  receive  the  fulness  of  Christ's 
redemption.  For  it  is  only  by  a  recognition  of 
the  commanding  authority  in  Christ,  and  by  an 
assent  to  it  yielded  from  our  heart  of  hearts,  that 
we  can  be  at  rest  beneath  His  cleansing  ministries 
— so  searching  and  so  penetrating  are  they.  In 
one  sense.  He  who  professes  to  bring  a  great 
redemption  to  men  must  be,  not  near  to,  but  far 


THE  CLEANSING  OF  THE  TEMPLE  73 


from  them.  Will  the  temple  of  the  human  heart 
ever  submit  itself  to  be  cleansed  by  any  Christ 
who  is  not  recognised  as  being  something  very 
different  from  and  very  far  greater  than  the  best 
reformers  who,  for  all  their  greatness,  are  still 
of  ourselves  ?  Not  with  such  a  cleansing  as  He 
wants  to  impart.  The  purpose  of  performing  it 
would  be  an  impertinence  in  any  one  of  the  family 
of  mankind  who  had  just  managed  to  climb  a 
little  higher  than  the  rest.  It  is  only  as  Christ 
proves  Himself — by  the  claim  to  perfect  inward 
purity  He  makes  and  by  the  justification  with  which 
the  after-history  seals  His  claim — as  He  proves 
Himself  to  stand  alone,  that  we  shall  be  prepared 
to  submit  ourselves  to  all  He  seeks  to  do.  Before 
we  shall  be  willing  to  yield  to  Him,  we  must  hold 
Him  unique,  not  in  that  He  has  mounted  nearer 
to  God  than  any  other  has  reached,  but  in  that 
His  is  the  only  life  which  has  ever  come  straight 
from  God  to  man.  Taking  Him  so.  His  insistent 
demand  to  be  the  cleanser  of  our  natures  will 
but  stand  as  the  natural  expression  of  the  divine 
royalty  that  is  His.  This  Christ,  who  cleansed 
the  Temple  of  builded  walls  as  none  other  than 


74    CHRIST  SEEN  AS  AUTHORITATIVE 

the  Son  of  God  has  the  right  to  do,  may,  if  He  be 
acknowledged  as  the  Son  of  God  indeed,  work 
upon  the  temple  of  our  hearts  what  ministries 
He  will ;  and  we  will  not  say  to  Him,  "  What 
sign  showest  thou  unto  us,  seeing  that  thou 
doest  these  things?"  Rather,  knowing  Him 
to  be  the  temple's  holy  Lord,  will  we  let  Him 
order  its  cleansing  as  He  shall  choose.  The 
Christ  who  had  the  right,  and  vindicated  it,  to 
rule  in  the  Temple  of  earth,  has  the  right 
also  to  rule  in  the  inner  temple  of  our  souls, 
and  to  make  it  indeed  what  His  Father's  house 
should  be. 


VII, 


CHRIST  SEEN  AS  PREACHER  OF  THE 
NEW  BIRTH:  NICODEMUS. 


HE  division  between  the  second  and  third 


chapters  of  the  Gospel,  coming,  as  chapter- 
divisions  not  seldom  do,  in  a  somewhat  inappropri- 
ate place,  may  at  first  prevent  us  from  perceiving 
how  the  account  of  Christ's  conversation  with 
Nicodemus  follows  on  from  and  illustrates  what 
John  says  about  Christ's  understanding  of  "  what 
was  in  man."  "  Many  believed  on  his  name,  be- 
holding his  signs  which  he  did.  But  Jesus  did  not 
trust  himself  unto  them  " — did  not,  that  is,  commit 
Himself  and  His  cause  to  these  men,  believers  in 
a  sense  though  they  might  be,  admitted  them  to 
no  confidential  relationships  with  Himself — "  for 
that  he  knew  all  men,  and  because  he  needed 


John  ii.  23-iii.  21. 


75 


76         CHRIST  SEEN  AS  PREACHER 

not  that  any  one  should  bear  witness  concerning 
man  ;  for  himself  knew  what  was  in  man."  They 
might  believe  on  Him  because  of  the  signs,  and 
yet  their  belief  might  be  a  thing  not  deep  enough, 
having  not  enough  real  understanding  of  Jesus 
behind  it,  to  secure  their  full  admission  to  the 
ranks  of  His  chosen  and  closest  ones.  Christ  saw 
that  much  of  the  early  faith  was  the  result  of  only 
a  surface-stirring  of  the  waters,  and  in  no  wise  a 
sign  that  the  great  deeps  of  personality  were 
broken  up.  And  these  who  made  their  hasty 
professions  must  be  driven  to  take  profounder 
soundings  both  in  Christ  and  in  themselves, 
before  Christ  would  set  upon  them  the  final  seal. 

Now,  to  show  how  Jesus  dealt  with  these  people 
— "  there  was  a  man  of  the  Pharisees,  named 
Nicodemus  " — who  was  one  of  those  impressed  by 
the  "  signs,"  and  who  in  consequence  hovered 
round  Christ  with  a  feeling  mixed  of  admira- 
tion and  hesitancy — admiration  for  what  Christ 
had  done,  hesitancy  in  regard  to  what  Christ  was 
going  to  do.  Coming  to  Christ  by  night,  his 
first  words  reveal  the  mental  attitude  of  the  man, 
"  Rabbi,  we  know  that  thou  art  a  teacher  come 


OF  THE  NEW  BIRTH  77 


from  God :  for  no  man  can  do  these  signs  that 
thou  doest,  except  God  be  with  him."  "  A  teacher 
come  from  God " — well,  there  is  nothing  very 
startling  about  that :  that  much  might  be  said 
of  a  hundred  others,  of  any  one,  indeed,  who 
taught  anything  worth  listening  to:  this  faint 
praise  was,  in  fact,  only  the  careful  opening  of 
conversation  on  the  part  of  Nicodemus  —  the 
flinging  of  the  burden  of  the  talk  upon  Christ 
Himself,  so  that  Nicodemus  might  judge,  from 
the  reply  he  received,  whither  things  were  tending. 
He  says  something  because,  having  sought  Christ 
out,  something  must  needs  be  said ;  but  he  puts 
as  little  as  possible  into  the  saying  of  it,  so  that 
he  shall  not  be  committed  to  any  definite  and 
decided  course.  The  first  words  of  the  conversa- 
tion proceed  from  the  visitor :  the  first  real  idea 
of  the  conversation  proceeds,  as  Nicodemus 
intended  it  to  proceed,  from  Christ.  The  utter- 
ance of  Nicodemus  is  but  the  preluding  note, 
struck  before  the  actual  music  begins. 

Would  not  the  new  Teacher  welcome  a  recruit 
from  the  Pharisees'  ranks,  conciliate  him  somewhat, 


78        CHRIST  SEEN  AS  PREACHER 


seek  to  overcome  this  wary  caution  he  was  show- 
ing, try — by  making  things  as  attractive  to  him  as 
might  be — to  engage  him  in  a  deeper  and  warmer 
adherence  than  he  had  reached  as  yet  ?  Would 
he  not  go  half-way  to  meet  a  possible  disciple 
such  as  this  ?  So  would  many  have  done.  But 
not  so  does  Christ.  As  from  towering  heights 
Nicodemus  receives  His  reply,  "  Except  a  man  be 
born  anew,  he  cannot  see  the  kingdom  of  God." 
If  there  was  to  be  anything  between  Christ  and 
Nicodemus,  there  must  be  plain  dealing  between 
them,  at  least :  this  ruler  of  the  Jews  must  not 
suppose  that  his  cautious  advances  will  be  met 
by  responding  cautious  advances  on  the  part  of 
Christ :  let  this  man's  notions  about  the  kingdom 
of  God,  or  about  any  possible  part  he  might  play 
in  the  bringing  in  of  the  kingdom  of  God,  be  what 
they  will,  Christ  will  not  tone  down  His  majestic 
conceptions  in  order  to  secure  one  single  vote. 
Nicodemus  wanted  to  know  how  far  Christ  was 
likely  to  be  in  harmony  with  him  ;  and  Christ, 
not  trusting  His  cause  to  discipleship  offered  with 
such  reserves,  delivers  His  ultimatum,  as  one 
might  say — "  Never  mind  about  how  far  I  am 


OF  THE  NEW  BIRTH  79 


likely  to  be  in  harmony  with  you  in  your  notions 
concerning  the  kingdom.  This  is  my  doctrine, 
*  Except  a  man  be  born  anew,  he  cannot  see  the 
kingdom.'  How  far  are  you  in  harmony  with 
me  ? "  To  such  a  guarded  Hking,  so  unready 
to  commit  itself,  Christ  would  not  commit  Him- 
self.   He  knew  what  was  in  man. 

It  has  been  rightly  said  that  this  is  a  point 
which  calls  always  for  reflection  —  not  only 
whether  we  have  faith  in  Christ,  but  whether 
Christ  has  faith  in  us.^  Is  our  abandonment 
to  Him  so  complete  that  He  can  abandon 
Himself  to  us  and  count  us  among  those  who 
have  really  identified  themselves  with  Him  ?  Or 
has  He  always  to  be  in  a  manner  thrusting  us 
back,  telling  us  that  we  have  not  yet  understood 
who  and  what  He  is,  that  the  essence  of  His 
teaching  is  hidden  from  us  still  ?  It  is  possible 
to  take  Christ  in  all  sincerity,  and  yet  to  take 
Him  as  something  less  than  what  He  is;  and  to 
such  a  taking  Christ  cannot  yield  Himself  in  all 
His  fulness.  Might  He  not  have  to  drive  some 
of  us  back  upon  the  fundamentals  of  His  ministry 
^  Dr.  Marcus  Dods,  in  loc. 


So        CHRIST  SEEN  AS  PREACHER 


and  His  gospel,  telling  us  that  we  have  not 
understood  them  yet,  and  that  until  they  are 
understood  and  accepted,  admission  to  the 
perfection  of  fellowship  must  be  denied  us  ? 
We  may  and  do  come  to  the  Christ  not  seldom 
with  reserves  and  qualifications  in  our  coming, 
with  a  mood  of  mind  towards  Him  which  lacks 
something  of  complete  abandonment;  and  to 
such  a  spirit  Christ  cannot  fully  give  Himself. 
Can  He  trust  our  trust  ?  Is  our  attitude  towards 
Him  an  attitude  to  which  He  can  respond  by 
an  attitude  of  perfect  self-bestowal  ?  If  not. 
He  can  only  drive  us  back  to  the  beginning  of 
things  once  more,  to  the  starting-point  whence 
all  true  discipleship  must  set  forth;  and  only 
when  we  accept  His  direction,  and  move  to  Him 
from  that  starting-point,  and  with  the  spirit  in  us 
which  descends  upon  us  there,  are  all  the  barriers 
broken  down.  The  movement  of  good  out  of 
Christ  to  us  is  checked  unless  it  be  with  a  right 
understanding  and  a  true  acceptance  of  the  main 
thing  in  Him  that  we  move  to  a  place  at  His  side. 

The  decisiveness  of  Christ'3  teaching  strikes 


OF  THE  NEW  BIRTH  8i 


one  here  as  did  the  decisiveness  of  Christ's  action 
a  Httle  while  before.  As  in  His  cleansing  of  the 
Temple  He  showed  Himself  prepared  to  re- 
cognise and  to  dash  upon  the  one  right  course, 
so  now  He  shows  Himself  prepared  with  the  one 
absolute  and  final  word.  Before  the  problem  of 
human  character  and  its  redemption,  Christ  has 
from  the  beginning  but  one  thing  to  say,  "  Ye 
must  be  born  anew."  Different  again  is  the 
Christ  herein  from  all  others — in  this  absolute- 
ness of  His,  this  readiness  to  prescribe  immedi- 
ately for  the  most  malignant  disease  the  world 
has  ever  known.  The  world's  prophets,  the  great 
minds  and  souls  which  have  addressed  themselves 
to  the  question  of  purifying  the  conduct  and 
the  character  of  their  fellow-men,  have  said 
anxiously,  "  Let  these  methods  be  tried.  Let 
this  effort  pave  the  way  for  a  more  searching 
and  far-reaching  effort  to  follow  by  and  by." 
To  them  the  question  has  been  a  question  in- 
deed— a  question  which,  as  one  asked  it,  set  a 
thousand  answers  ringing,  among  which  it  was 
hardly  possible  to  choose  the  best.    For  the 

Christ  there  was  but  one  answer,  which  from 
6 


82         CHRIST  SEEN  AS  PREACHER 


the  first  He  knew :  for  the  Christ  there  was  in 
one  sense  no  question  at  all :  He  had  once  for 
all  diagnosed  the  disease  and  could  Himself  once 
for  all  proclaim  the  cure,  "  Except  a  man  be 
born  anew,  he  cannot  see  the  kingdom  of  God." 
There  is  no  tentative  experimenting  about  it. 
"  Ye  must  be  born  anew." 

Human  nature,  on  the  moral  side  of  it,  calls 
for  some  one  who  can  say  to  it,  "  You  mustr 
And  we,  although  we  may  sometimes  be  in- 
clined to  resent  it,  have  to  confess,  in  our  wiser 
moments,  that  in  the  matter  of  character  and 
heart  and  soul,  we  need  some  voice  which  has 
the  ring  of  authority  in  it,  as  greatly  as  we  need 
such  a  voice  in  any  of  the  other  departments  of 
life  wherein  we  allow  authority  to  have  sway. 
In  physical  disease,  we  want  a  physician  who 
can  say  to  us,  "  You  must " ;  and  of  the  value 
of  one  who  should  only  give  hints  and  suggest 
experiments  we  should  justly  have  doubt.  In 
the  diseases  of  the  soul,  complex  and  unsearch- 
able as  they  are,  it  should  be  no  hardship,  but 
rather  a  relief,  to  have  One  standing  above  the 
soul  in  its  helpless  weakness,  and  saying  to  it, 


OF  THE  NEW  BIRTH  83 


"You  must."  The  greatest  of  the  world's 
ministers  of  redemption  —  after  a  thousand 
others  have  given  their  advice  and  made  their 
suggestions  and,  with  furrowed  brows,  painfully 
thought  out  a  course  which  may  accomplish 
something  not  quite  in  vain — the  greatest  of 
them  will  be  the  one  who  stands  up,  calm- 
thoughted  and  clear  -  voiced,  and  declares, 
"  There  is  but  one  thing,  and  that  one  thing 
must  be  done,  would  you  be  made  whole." 
And  this,  the  Christ,  is  He. 

What  is  to  be  said  of  this  new  birth  which 
Jesus  pressed  upon  Nicodemus  as  the  necessary 
means  of  man's  moral  and  spiritual  cure  ?  Spite 
of  the  startling  sound  of  the  phrase — so  startling 
that  Nicodemus  was  thrown  into  bewilderment  as 
he  heard  it — the  entire  reasonableness  of  it,  and 
certainly  the  entire  sufficiency  of  it,  becomes 
apparent  with  a  moment's  thought.  Our  birth 
is  of  course  the  one  thing  in  our  experience  in 
which  we  make  or  do  nothing  for  ourselves,  but 
only  receive  from  another:  the  life  which  then 
becomes  ours  is  a  thing  wholly  imposed  upon 


84         CHRIST  SEEN  AS  PREACHER 


us,  set  into  us,  without  any  co-operation  of  our 
own :  at  birth,  more  absolutely  even  than  at 
death  —  the  time  and  circumstances  of  which 
may,  to  a  certain  limited  extent,  be  determined 
by  our  own  doings  —  are  we  wholly  passive, 
simply  accepting  what  is  bestowed.  How  is  the 
moral  life,  the  character,  of  man  to  be  cleared  of 
its  blemishes  and  kept  within  right  bounds  and 
directed  upon  true  ideals?  In  the  last  resort, 
only  thus — by  finishing  with  all  man  has  been 
and  done,  and  by  man  being  so  held  beneath 
the  life  and  character  of  God  that  man's  life  and 
character  may  be  imposed  upon  him  from  God, 
new-born  in  him  out  of  God.  A  transformed 
moral  life  becomes  ours,  not  by  altering  this 
thing  or  that  in  us,  not  by  substituting  a  better 
piece  of  machinery  here  or  there  within  the 
depths  of  character  where  the  machinery  hitherto 
employed  has  failed  to  work  or  has  worked  out 
wrong  results,  but  by  turning  ourselves,  receptive 
and  waiting,  toward  God,  saying,  "  Let  the  life 
in  me  be  produced  by  and  out  of  Thine,  my 
inward  life  and  being  be  born  from  Thee."  We 
take  with  ourselves  the  course  which  Christ  pro- 


OF  THE  NEW  BIRTH  85 


claimed  as  the  only  possible  course  of  complete 
redemption  when  we  detach  ourselves  from 
everything  whence  our  life  has  been  drawn  till 
now,  cease  all  effort  at  manufacturing  a  moral 
life  for  ourselves,  and  let  ourselves  be  born. 

Heightening  of  ideals  of  life  and  conduct  will 
not  of  itself  make  life  a  perfect  thing ;  for,  dream 
as  you  may  of  high  ideals,  you  will  find  only 
soiled  and  decayed  materials  within  yourself 
wherewith  to  build  life  according  to  your  dreams ; 
and  out  of  imperfect  elements  a  perfect  product 
cannot  be  made.  Self-improvement  will  not  lift 
us  to  the  highest :  one  wonders,  indeed,  that 
any  sane  man,  surveying  the  problem  of  human 
character,  should  delude  himself  for  even  an 
instant  with  the  idea  that  he  can  train  or 
improve  himself  to  the  loftiest  reaches  of  moral 
living  ;  for  the  only  implements  we  can  use  for 
the  purpose  of  improving  ourselves  are  the 
faculties  and  capabilities  of  our  nature;  and 
these  are  themselves  the  very  things  that  need 
to  be  improved.  Could  we  once  get  outside 
ourselves,  and  obtain  some  leverage  upon  our 
own  moral  nature  from  beyond  our  own  moral 


86         CHRIST  SEEN  AS  PREACHER 


nature,  we  might  accomplish  something;  but 
since  that  is  a  feat  for  ever  impossible,  self- 
improvement,  hampered  by  faultiness  in  the  tools 
it  employs,  can  never  achieve  a  result  wherein 
fault  shall  not  be.  Only  one  method  can  there 
be  by  which  the  moral  nature  of  man  may  be 
preserved  from  taint  and  realise  all  possibilities 
of  worth — yet  a  method  all-sufficient,  if  only  it 
be  faithfully  pursued ;  and  that  is  the  attachment 
of  life  to  a  new  source,  the  clearing  out  of  all  we 
are,  the  filling  of  our  nature  from  new  and  holier 
springs  that  rise  in  the  Nature  holiest  of  all,  and 
the  receiving  of  all  that  goes  to  constitute  the 
inner  life  we  live  out  of  the  life  of  God  Himself. 
Not  to  be  made  better,  but  to  be  new-born,  is  the 
moral  programme  by  whose  fulfilment  men  will 
be  redeemed.  "  Except  a  man  be  born  of  water 
and  the  Spirit,  he  cannot  enter  into  the  kingdom 
of  God."  "  Born  of  water  " — water,  the  accepted 
symbol  of  repentance :  there  must  be  the  cutting 
oneself  loose  from  what  has  been,  the  drowning 
of  one's  present  moral  accomplishment,  as  it  were, 
and  the  coming  forth  from  the  baptism  of  repent- 
ance in  which  it  has  been  swept  away  ready  to 


OF  THE  NEW  BIRTH 


87 


make  a  new  beginning  again.  Then  "  born  of 
the  Spirit " — the  attaching  of  oneself  to  the 
inspirations  of  God  that  all  we  are  may  be 
derived  from  them  and  made  by  them,  the  open- 
ness of  one's  nature  to  the  nature  of  God  so  that 
our  nature  comes  in  its  degree  to  be  but  the 
continuation,  the  reproduction,  of  His.  And  so 
we  enter  into  God's  kingdom :  so  is  that  vast 
range  of  regnant  purities  and  towering  ideals 
and  measureless  holinesses  thrown  open  to  what 
is  in  us  now,  since  what  is  in  us  now  is  what  was 
in  God  and  has  come  to  us  from  Him.  "  Ye 
must  be  born  anew!' 

The  transformed  life,  the  corrected  life,  is  the 
life  which  takes  its  rise  in  God.  And  once  again 
Christ  re-asserts  that  truth  in  differing  manner, 
"  The  wind  bloweth  where  it  listeth,  and  thou 
hearest  the  voice  thereof,  but  knowest  not  whence 
it  Cometh,  and  whither  it  goeth :  so  is  every  one 
that  is  born  of  the  Spirit."  The  verse  is  taken 
almost  universally  —  though  I  am  sure  it  is 
wrongly  so  taken — as  if  it  were  the  Spirit  which 
comes  one  knows  not  whence  and  goes  one  knows 
not  whither.    Yet  so  one  misses  what  Christ  is 


88         CHRIST  SEEN  AS  PREACHER 


seeking  to  emphasise  for  His  hearer's  mind.  "  So 
is  every  one  that  is  born  of  the  Spirit."  It  is  not 
the  Spirit,  but  the  transformed  life,  that  is  like 
the  wind  in  its  mystery.  We  hear  the  wind's 
voice,  but  there  is  nothing  in  all  this  wide  world 
on  which  we  can  lay  our  finger  and  say,  "  It  is 
from  this  it  took  its  rise  "  "  So  is  every  one  that 
is  born  of  the  Spirit " — every  one  whose  life  is 
transformed  by  being  born  out  of  the  life  of  God. 
There  is  no  force  known  to  man,  no  influence 
counted  among  the  influences  this  earth  can  bring 
to  bear,  of  which  we  can  say,  "  This  is  what  ac- 
complished the  miracle."  For  it  was  not  within 
the  limits  of  this  world  that  the  miracle  was 
wrought:  far  out  beyond  this  world  and  all  its 
circle  of  forces  and  influences  lies  the  source  of 
this  wonder  worked  upon  this  human  soul :  it  has 
been  born  of  God.  When  you  see  a  life  trans- 
formed indeed,  you  cannot  point  to  the  place 
whence  its  transformation  came,  so  long  as  you 
search  this  world  alone,  although  you  search  it 
through  and  through,  any  more  than  you  can 
identify  the  touch  which  started  the  winds  upon 
their  career.    For  the  transformation  came  from 


OF  THE  NEW  BIRTH  89 


beyond  this  earth's  utmost  bound.  It  is  the 
introduction  to  earth  of  something  that  belongs 
to  heaven. 

And  nothing  less  than  this  must  be  under- 
stood by  "  conversion  " — that  much  misunderstood 
word.  It  means  the  attaching  of  ourselves  to 
God,  that  all  which  constitutes  the  moral  life  in 
us  may  be  set  within  us  straight  from  Him. 

But  still  Nicodemus  did  not  understand.  "  How 
can  these  things  be?"  His  failure  is  suggestive; 
and  his  inability  to  understand  what  had  been 
said  doomed  him  to  remain  without  comprehension 
of  what  was  still  to  say.  The  need  for  such  a 
transformation  as  that  of  which  Christ  had  been 
speaking — that  at  least  he  ought  to  have  under- 
stood :  it  was  a  thing  so  patent  that  it  might 
even  be  called  an  "  earthly  thing  "  :  any  one  who 
surveyed  life  dispassionately  should  recognise  that 
man's  moral  condition  demanded  nothing  less  than 
this  absolute  change,  this  being  born  anew.  And 
if  Nicodemus,  the  teacher  of  Israel,  had  not 
reached  so  far  as  that,  how  could  Christ  go  on  to 
tell  him  the  still  greater  wonder  that  in  Him,  the 


90         CHRIST  SEEN  AS  PREACHER 


Christ  Himself,  the  new  life  into  which  man 
needed  to  be  born  had  come  down  to  earth? 
"  If  I  told  you  earthly  things,  and  ye  believe  not, 
how  shall  ye  believe,  if  I  tell  you  heavenly  things  ?  " 
And  yet  Christ  goes  on  to  speak,  even  though  He 
knew  that  Nicodemus  would  not  comprehend,  of 
those  same  heavenly  things.  "  And  no  man  hath 
ascended  into  heaven,  but  he  that  descended  out  of 
heaven,  even  the  Son  of  man,  which  is  in  heaven." 
This  birth  into  the  life  of  God,  of  which  Christ 
has  been  speaking,  was  made  possible  to  man,  for 
in  Christ  the  life  of  God  had  come :  man  could 
not  ascend  into  heaven  toward  it,  but  in  the  Christ 
it  had  descended  out  of  heaven  to  man ;  and  the 
Son  of  man — walking  upon  earth,  yet  most  truly 
in  heaven  still  because  He  was  immersed  in  and 
possessed  by  the  life  of  heaven — the  Son  of  man 
was  offering  this  heavenly  birth  to  those  who 
would  link  themselves  with  Him.  But  Nicodemus, 
not  having  realised  how  greatly  the  change  was 
needed,  would  be  still  more  unable  to  realise  how 
in  Christ  the  change  was  brought  near;  and 
Christ,  feeling  that  the  "  heavenly  things  "  pressed 
for  utterance  within  Him  and  must  not,  under- 


OF  THE  NEW  BIRTH 


stood  or  not  understood,  go  unspoken,  utters  them, 
through  the  rest  of  this  interview,  to  Himself 
rather  than  to  the  hearer,  Nicodemus  saying 
no  other  word.  To  all  this  Nicodemus  was 
strange.  It  was  a  language  whose  interpretation 
was  beyond  his  power. 

Christ's  offer  of  Himself  as  the  Giver  of  new 
and  redeemed  life  grows  reasonable  to  us — the 
word  is  advisedly  employed — only  as  we  realise 
the  moral  condition  of  human  nature,  of  our  own 
nature  most  of  all.  The  required  thing  is  that 
we  shall  search  our  own  souls,  and  see  if  it  be  not 
a  new  life  they  need — if  anything  less  than  that 
will  in  all  reasonableness  serve  our  turn.  Then, 
with  the  impression  of  it  fresh  upon  us,  are  we 
to  behold  the  Christ.  And  then  the  ministry  He 
offers,  His  assurance  that  in  Him  the  new  life  we 
need  has  descended  out  of  heaven,  will  appear  to 
us — most  wondrous  "  heavenly  thing  "  although  it 
be — a  thing  we  can  accept  and  in  manner  even 
understand.  What  my  soul  needs,  and  what  my 
soul  cannot  obtain,  is  here  in  Him.  If  I  must  be 
born  anew  (and  how  else  can  a  moral  life  like 
mine,  such  an  abject  failure  as  it  is,  be  purified 


92         CHRIST  SEEN  AS  PREACHER 

and  redeemed?)  I  turn  myself  with  gladness  to 
this  Christ  who  bears  upon  Him  the  signs  that 
not  from  this  world,  but  from  other  worlds,  He 
came  —  from  worlds  of  goodness  where  I  fain 
would  be.  By  the  very  depth  of  my  need  I  am 
made  to  see  the  greatness  of  His  power :  under- 
standing what  is  the  reality  and  the  terror  of  sin, 
I  understand  how  in  the  programme  of  spiritual 
ministry  which  He  proclaims  is  its  only  reasonable 
cure ;  and  as  He  tells  me  that  by  my  coming  to 
Him  and  by  my  throwing  myself  upon  Him  I 
shall  be  born  into  the  high  spiritual  worlds,  I  ask 
no  more  "  How  can  these  things  be  ?  "  For  I 
know  that,  made  one  with  Him,  I  shall  be  born 
of  God. 

Upon  the  other  "  heavenly  things "  of  which 
Christ  went  on  to  speak  let  us  attempt  to  take 
some  hold.  What  are  the  main  points  in  the 
rest  of  Christ's  speech  to  this  ruler  of  the  Jews  ? 
There  is,  indeed,  practically  only  one  point,  though 
from  that  one  point  some  consequences  follow 
which  Christ  draws  out.  That  one  point,  at  any 
rate,  let  us  grasp. 


OF  THE  NEW  BIRTH 


In  brief,  it  is  this.  It  is  out  of  a  divine  love 
that  this  call  to  a  newness  of  life  has  come : 
stern  and  deep-reaching  though  this  demand  may 
appear  to  be,  it  issues,  not  out  of  a  relentless 
authority,  but  out  of  a  gracious  tenderness  which 
longs  to  perfect  the  good  and  the  happiness  of 
man.  "  Ye  must  be  born  anew,"  and  the  means 
of  this  new  birth  is  presented  to  you  in  the  Son 
of  man  who  came  down  from  heaven — well,  but  it 
sounds  very  stern  and  absolute :  what  is  behind  it 
all  ?  This  is  behind  it  all — a  tenderness  which 
has  put  itself  so  entirely  at  the  service  of  man 
that  it  is  going  to  stop  short  at  nothing,  not  even 
at  a  cross,  in  order  that  man  may  be  blest.  This 
Son  of  man,  who  presses  the  new  life  upon  you, 
does  it  at  the  bidding  of  love  which  will  even 
suffer  for  your  sake.  "  And  as  Moses  lifted  up 
the  serpent  in  the  wilderness,  even  so  must  the 
Son  of  man  be  lifted  up  :  that  whosoever  believeth 
may  in  him  have  eternal  life.'*  Just  as  conspicu- 
ously as  that  sign  of  Israel's  deliverance ,  was 
displayed  before  the  gaze  of  those  who  cared  to 
see,  so  conspicuously  will  this  Son  of  man  allow 
Himself  to  be  lifted  up — will  not  even  shrink 


94         CHRIST  SEEN  AS  PREACHER 

from  that — so  that  men  may  be  drawn  to  Him. 
Knowing  that  for  the  sake  of  men  He  was  going 
so  far  as  that,  Christ  could  say  "  For  God  so  loved 
the  world "  that  this  Son  of  man  came  to  live 
His  life  and  perform  His  ministry  and  die  His 
death.  Great  and  stern  as  this  ideal  of  a  new 
birth  and  a  new  life  may  appear  to  be,  still  it  is 
by  Love  it  is  imposed ;  and  behind  the  ministries 
of  the  Christ,  who  declared  the  ideal  and  sum- 
moned men  to  Himself  for  its  realisation,  it  was 
Love  that  was  at  work. 

Christ  sought  thus  to  make  His  great  ideal 
magnetic  by  showing  how  its  realisation  is 
demanded  by  God  alike  for  our  sakes  and  for 
His  own.  For  Love  behind  the  demands  of  God 
means  that  God  wants  us,  and  can  only  have  us 
through  our  fulfilment  of  those  demands — that 
He  knows  we  are  made  for  and  want  Him,  and 
can  only  have  Him  through  that  same  fulfilment. 
God  wanting  us  and  knowing  that  we  want  Him, 
and  out  of  that  Love  presenting  this  loftiness  of 
ideal  and  this  Son  for  the  ideal's  attainment — 
with  that  consciousness  in  us,  the  height  of  the 
ideal  appals  us  no  more  and  the  terror  of  it 


OF  THE  NEW  BIRTH  95 


passes  away :  the  command  of  the  God  who  is 
seated  over  us  as  Ruler  is  really  the  drawing  of 
the  God  who  wants  us  in  His  love ;  and  He  pro- 
claims the  command  in  order  that  He  may  have 
those  whom  He  wants,  and  that  they,  wanting 
Him,  may  have  Him  too.  All  God's  arrange- 
ments in  the  spiritual  world  are  what  they  are, 
not  simply  because  He  has  chosen  to  order  them 
so,  but  because  only  through  them  and  through 
their  carrying  out  can  His  love  be  content. 
"  God  so  loved  the  world."  That  is  the  main 
point  in  Christ's  thought  through  these  later 
words  of  His  talk  with  the  enquirer — one  of  the 
"  heavenly  things "  which  it  was  hopeless  to  ex- 
pect Nicodemus  to  understand.  Behind  Christ's 
proclamation  "  Ye  must  be  born  anew,"  and 
behind  His  proclamation  of  Himself  as  the  means 
whereby  that  strange  "  must "  could  be  carried 
out,  lay  this — that  God  so  loved  the  world  as  to 
establish  the  "  must "  and  to  send  the  Christ, 

But  Christ's  mind  passed  on  then  to  this  other 
thing,  which  followed  as  the  natural  corollary 
from  the  thing  He  has  just  uttered — that,  since 


96        CHRIST  SEEN  AS  PREACHER 


the  ideal  is  proclaimed  hy  Love,  any  condemna- 
tion it  brings  upon  man  is  in  reality  a  con- 
demnation passed  by  man  upon  himself.  "  For 
God  sent  not  the  Son  into  the  world  to  judge 
the  world  " — that  was  no  part  of  His  mission  :  it 
was  out  of  Love  He  came.  And  yet,  "  he  that 
believeth  not  hath  been  judged  already,  because 
he  hath  not  believed  on  the  name  of  the  only 
begotten  Son  of  God."  The  Son  comes  not  to 
judge :  He  comes  only  to  present  life ;  but  whoso 
rejects  Him  judges  himself,  condemns  himself, 
cuts  himself  off  from  life.  How  can  it  be  other- 
wise? By  rejection  we  declare  what  manner  of 
men  we  are,  pass  sentence  upon  ourselves.  "  This 
is  the  judgment,  that  the  light  is  come  into  the 
world,  and  men  loved  the  darkness  rather  than  the 
light ;  for  their  works  were  evil."  Though  Christ 
here  changes  the  metaphor,  the  meaning  is  still 
clear  enough.  No  need  for  Christ  to  judge  us, 
when  our  rejection  of  Him  is  pronounced :  since 
life — or  light,  to  employ  the  other  figure — comes 
to  us  in  Him,  we  show  ourselves  up,  judge 
ourselves,  by  the  rejection,  and  prove  ourselves 
unworthy  of  the  life,  unloving  of  the  light.  We 


OF  THE  NEW  BIRTH  97 


declare  concerning  ourselves — and  there  is  no 
more  need  that  God  or  Christ  should  declare  it 
concerning  us — that  we  love  darkness  rather  than 
light,  that  from  the  life  and  light  in  the  Son 
we  are,  and  have  chosen  to  be,  cut  off.  Christ's 
coming  is  the  offered  gift  of  Love :  if  we  receive 
Him  not,  our  loss  is  all  the  heavier  because  it  is 
the  loss  of  something  we  might  have  possessed, 
since  Love  offered  it ;  and  the  loss  we  suffer  is  a 
loss  to  which  we  have  voluntarily  chosen  to  be 
doomed. 

So  every  rejection  of  Christ's  ministries,  though 
it  moves  Him  not  to  judge  the  rejecter,  must 
meet  its  judgment  nevertheless.  For  our  re- 
jection of  His  ministries  hands  us  over  to  the 
dominion  of  those  forces  which  His  ministries 
would  have  corrected  or  cast  out,  and  allows 
them  to  have  their  way.  And  it  is  with  constant 
remembrance  of  that  solemn  truth  that  such  a 
ministry  as  the  ministry  recorded  in  this  Gospel 
must  be  faced.  Christ  is  always,  not  the  Judge, 
but  the  Life-giver  whom  Love  has  sent ;  but  by 
want  of  abandonment  to  the  Life  and  Love,  we 
pass  our  own  sentence,  hand  ourselves  over  to  the 
7 


98    CHRIST  AS  PREACHER  OF  NEW  BIRTH 


forces  of  evil  which  will  work  their  doom  within 
our  souls.  Rejecting  the  Christ's  ministries  we 
are,  in  so  far  as  we  reject  them,  judged  already. 

Love  behind  the  great  ideal — judgment  and 
destiny  waiting  every  moment  upon  our  attitude 
towards  the  Love — these  are  the  great  thoughts 
which  moved  through  Christ's  mind  with  the 
uncomprehending  Nicodemus  before  Him.  As 
these  phrases  drop  from  the  lips  of  the  Christ 
once  more  (and  they  are  the  phrases  which  He 
uses  unchanged,  and  will  ever  use  unchanged,  to 
all  who  come  to  grasp  His  lesson  and  to  learn 
His  secret)  it  needs  that  His  hearers  should  so 
write  them  upon  mind  and  memory  that  they 
may  pass  from  their  interview  with  Him  with 
hearts  enlightened  and  faith  made  stronger,  and 
with  all  these  things — things  both  "  earthly  "  and 
"  heavenly  " — holding  them  fast. 


VIII. 


CHRIST  SEEN  ROUSING  SELF-KNOW- 
LEDGE:  THE  SAMARITAN  WOMAN. 


HE  woman  of  Samaria,  it  is  needful  to 


J-  observe  in  order  to  appreciate  rightly  any 
points  suggested  by  Christ's  dealing  with  her,  has 
had  set  upon  her  an  amount  of  blame  which  is 
beyond  her  deserts.  She  is  commonly  taken  as 
an  example  of  human  nature  fallen  far  towards  its 
worst.  But  it  is  noteworthy  that  throughout  the 
whole  interview,  Christ  appears  to  look  upon  her, 
not  so  much  as  one  who  needs  reproof  for  flagrant 
sin,  as  one  who  needs  healing  for  the  pain,  and 
satisfaction  for  the  sense  of  brokenness  and  failure, 
which  life  had  flung  upon  her ;  and  yet  Christ,  we 
know,  would  have  been  the  last  to  attenuate  or 
belittle  whatever  measure  of  guilt  might  have  been 


ToHN  iv.  1-38. 


99 


loo    CHRIST  ROUSING  SELF-KNOWLEDGE 


hers.  Had  she  been  one  who  sought  for  and 
revelled  in  evil,  finding  joy  in  her  severance  from 
purity  and  uprightness,  Christ's  tone  would  have 
been  severer,  His  whole  attitude  more  like  that  of 
a  judge.  That  the  woman  had  drifted  into  sin  is 
of  course  clear ;  but  that  she  had,  taking  her  past 
as  a  whole,  been  more  sinned  against  than  sinning, 
I  think  it  is  legitimate  to  conclude.  When  one 
remembers  that,  in  the  laxity  of  practice  which 
had  overtaken  the  Jewish  nation  in  this  matter,  a 
man  could  at  any  time  divorce  his  wife  if  he  con- 
sidered that  in  the  smallest  matter  cause  of  offence 
had  been  given,  the  fact  that  this  woman  had 
been  cast  off  by  five  husbands  may  after  all  not 
mean  very  much ;  and  it  is  small  wonder  that, 
after  an  experience  of  hardship  and  cruelty,  she 
should  at  length  have  gone  astray.  And  so,  I 
say,  it  is  legitimate  to  conclude  that  she  had 
been  more  sinned  against  than  sinning.  She 
stands  before  Christ  as  one  with  whom  the 
world  had  dealt  harshly,  who  had  found 
the  cup  which  the  world  had  held  to  her  lips 
to  be  bitter  indeed,  who  had  been  broken 
down  into   wrong  rather    than    sought   for  it 


THE  SAMARITAN  WOMAN  loi 

with  eager  desire,  and  who  needed  sorely  to 
be  healed  rather  than  to  be  reproved  or 
blamed. 

Now,  with  this  maimed,  starved,  hopeless  soul 
before  Him,  see  how  Christ  sets  Himself  to  its 
relief.  Before  all  else.  He  wants  this  woman  to 
realise  the  conditions  of  the  problem,  so  to  say — 
to  estimate  what  it  is  she  needs,  to  rouse  herself 
out  of  mere  vague  yearning  and  set  herself  to  a 
definite  quest.  "If  thou  knewest  the  gift  of  God, 
and  who  it  is  that  saith  to  thee.  Give  me  to  drink  ; 
thou  wouldest  have  asked  of  him,  and  he  would 
have  given  thee  living  water."  He  had  it,  and 
could  give  it :  the  revelations  and  the  ministries 
which  would  have  taken  hold  upon  her  broken 
life  and  raised  it  into  wholeness  were  ready  in 
Him ;  and  the  Christ  could  have  saved  her  all 
thought  about  what  it  was  she  required, 
revealed  to  her  at  once  how  in  God,  and 
in  Himself,  God's  messenger,  all  she  required 
was  lying.  But  He  wants  her  to  realise  the 
problem  of  her  own  nature  and  her  own 
need :  she  must  know  the  gift  of  God,  think 


I02     CHRIST  ROUSING  SELF-KNOWLEDGE 


about  it,  ask  for  it,  do  her  part  and  seek  for 
it  before  the  Christ  would  do  His  part  and 
give. 

To  appropriate  the  full  benediction  of  a 
ministry  such  as  Christ's,  the  soul  must  know 
itself,  take  its  own  measure,  bring  out  into  the 
light  of  recognition  its  secret  need  and  care.  We 
meet  with  Christ  not  seldom,  in  the  weakness  and 
brokenness  and  disillusionment  of  life,  and  fancy 
that  in  some  vague  fashion  we  could  not  define  to 
ourselves,  all  His  restoring  grace  will  be  passed 
over  to  us,  and  that,  without  any  effort  of  ours  at 
forming  a  well-defined  relationship  with  Him,  He 
will  take  us  into  His  charge.  All  that  is  left  in 
us  very  often,  when  some  hour  of  crisis  has  fallen 
upon  us  and  this  or  that  part  of  our  life  is  sunk  in 
ruin,  is  a  vague  sense  that  all  is  gone  wrong,  and 
that  somehow  the  magic  of  Christ  must  make 
things  right  and  whole.  It  is  not  to  be  said  that 
such  a  vague,  undefined  hope  will  be  in  vain :  one 
cannot  turn,  be  it  in  ever  such  a  haze  of  bewilder- 
ment, to  Christ  without  finding  something  from 
Him  returning  upon  us;  but  the  best  is  not  won 
from  Christ  until  we  know  what  it  is  we  seek. 


THE  SAMARITAN  WOMAN  103 

He  would  have  us  know  the  gift  of  God  in  Him 
and  ask  for  it  from  Him.  It  is  no  useless  thing, 
but  a  thing  useful  beyond  all  telling,  to  search 
through  the  deep  places  of  our  nature  till  we 
come  upon  the  weakest  spot,  to  learn  what  there 
has  been  in  us  that  has  made  life  break  down  so 
sadly — and  then,  knowing  something  of  the  con- 
ditions of  our  problem,  to  turn  to  Christ  and  say, 
"  The  gift  to  answer  to  this  lack  in  me,  to  repair 
this  flaw  in  me,  to  fill  up  this  emptiness  in  me 
which  has  cost  me  so  dear,  is  the  gift  I  need." 
To  know  ourselves,  to  take  the  weak  places  in  us 
and  connect  them  (if  it  may  be  so  put)  with  the 
corresponding  strong  places  in  Christ,  to  malke 
faith  and  expectancy  well  defined  and  clear,  is  a 
preliminary  to  receiving  the  absolute  best  into  our 
souls.  And  if  we  cannot  understand  ourselves, 
let  us  realise  that  at  least,  make  the  very  in- 
definiteness  of  our  necessities  the  definite  thing 
we  show,  and  seek  for  light  upon  the  dark 
mysteries  within.  We  must  know  the  gift  of 
God  which  is  to  match  the  want  in  us,  before 
a  perfect  sacred  ministry  can  be  exercised  on 
our  behalf. 


104     CHRIST  ROUSING  SELF-KNOWLEDGE 


But  then,  as  if  declaring  the  correlative  to  that, 
Christ,  while  driving  this  woman  in  upon  herself 
so  that  she  might  realise  the  definite  thing  she 
wanted,  the  one  gift  for  which  her  condition  called, 
proclaims  also  that,  in  satisfying  one  need.  He 
satisfies  all.  It  would  have  been  living  water 
He  gave  her,  had  she  known  the  gift ;  and  "  who- 
soever drinketh  of  the  water  that  I  shall  give  him 
shall  never  thirst,"  What,  this  one  gift  cover 
everything?  This  one  bestowal  of  water — even 
though  it  be  living  water,  life-bringing,  in  regard 
to  the  immediate  thirst — prevent  thirst  for  ever? 
Will  there  not  be  other  thirsts  for  which  some 
different  supply  must  be  sought?  No.  The 
ministry  of  Christ — although  it  be  a  suddenly- 
awakened  need  in  this  or  that  part  of  our  nature 
that  moves  us  to  call  it  to  our  aid — is,  in  the  full 
exercise  of  it,  sufficient  not  only  for  this  or  that 
part  of  our  nature,  but  for  all.  And  the  point, 
the  lesson  of  it,  stands  thus  —  although  we 
need  to  know  ourselves,  our  immediate  want, 
our  present  requirement,  the  gift  which  at  this 
moment  our  nature  lacks,  still  the  Christ  is  never 
to  be  taken  simply  as  One  who  devises  expedients 


THE  SAMARITAN  WOMAN  105 

and  meets  new  emergencies  with  their  fitted 
remedies,  and  who,  in  ministering  to  this  weak- 
ness, omits  to  touch  that.  His  nature  touches 
and  meets  us  at  this  special  place  of  necessity  to 
whose  existence  we  have  just  become  alive,  pre- 
cisely because  His  nature  is  fitted  to  touch  and 
meet  the  whole  of  ours.  Our  conception  is  to  rise 
— as  Christ  Himself  sought  to  make  this  woman's 
rise — from  the  local  and  transient  giving  to  the 
universal  giving  that  He  performs.  Behind  every 
presenting  of  this  or  that  request  which  we  make 
to  Christ,  we  are  to  carry  the  consciousness  that 
He  holds  in  Himself,  not  only  the  possibility  of 
answering  to  the  current  request,  but  a  life  which, 
if  we  could  but  hold  ourselves  altogether  in  con- 
tact with  it,  would  make  us  fully  live,  and  allow 
no  single  request  ever  to  rise  in  anything  of  pain- 
fulness  again.  For  so  will  our  trust  in  Him  grow 
a  fuller  thing,  our  appeal  to  Him  broaden  out, 
till  at  last  we  may  realise — or  come  near  to 
realising — the  promise  He  made,  and  find  the 
water  He  bestows  to  have  become  in  us  indeed 
a  well  of  water  springing  up  into  everlasting 
life. 


io6     CHRIST  ROUSING  SELF-KNOWLEDGE 


It  is  on  these  two  points  that  Christ,  through- 
out the  conversation  with  the  Samaritan  woman, 
lays  the  emphasis  of  His  words.  These  are  the 
things  He  seeks  to  impress  upon  His  hearer 
with  most  of  force ;  for  as  the  talk  proceeds,  He 
does  but  recur  to  them,  once  more  bidding  the 
woman  realise  her  present  and  pressing  need 
when  He  tells  her  to  call  her  husband  and  come 
hither — once  more  declaring  Himself  as  the  all- 
sufificient  One  when,  in  regard  to  the  Messiah,  He 
proclaims,  "  I  that  speak  unto  thee  am  he." 
And,  to  receive  the  perfect  benediction  of  this 
ministry,  our  hearts  must  take  the  lessons 
home.  In  the  shortcoming  of  life,  in  its  dis- 
illusionment, in  its  sin,  realise  the  particular 
need,  and  present  it  before  Christ.  But  realise, 
too,  that,  were  our  relationship  to  Christ  com- 
plete, all  the  particular  needs  of  our  nature 
would  be  swallowed  up  and  forgotten  in  the 
all-sufificingness  which  would  pass  to  us  from 
Him. 

Before  the  story  is  left,  it  remains  to  note 
(because  the  noting  of  it  brings  an  added  beauty 


THE  SAMARITAN  WOMAN  107 


both  upon  the  relationship  of  Christ  to  this 
woman,  and  upon  His  relationship  to  us)  how, 
in  refreshing  the  spirit  of  the  Samaritan  Christ 
refreshed  His  own,  how  He  found  His  own 
delight  in  administering  hope  and  comfort  to 
her  bruised  and  wounded  soul.  His  disciples 
had  gone  away  into  the  city  to  buy  meat, 
while  Jesus,  wearied  with  His  journey,  sat 
thus  on  the  well ;  and  they  returned  just  as 
the  conversation  was  at  its  height,  to  find  that 
their  Master  had  been  refreshed  with  better 
refreshment  than  the  meat  they  brought  could 
give.  He  had  had  meat  to  eat  that  they 
knew  not  of :  His  meat  had  been  to  do  the 
will  of  Him  that  sent  Him,  and  He  had  done 
that  will  upon  this  woman's  heart.  It  is  sweet 
to  think  that  with  every  draught  of  the  water 
of  life  He  gives  us,  the  Christ  refreshes  His 
own  spirit — that  as  He  goes  to  and  fro  about  this 
world,  waiting  near  the  earthly  wells  at  which 
men  and  women  try  to  slake  their  thirst.  His  joy 
grows  abundant  when  they  say  to  Him,  "  Give 
me  this  water,  that  I  thirst  not,  neither  come 
hither  to  draw "  —  that   our    new  life  is  the 


io8     CHRIST  ROUSING  SELF-KNOWLEDGE 


Christ's  new  delight.  For  remembering  that, 
we  shall  watch  for  Him  the  more  alertly,  and 
be  the  readier  to  give  to  Him  what  we  can 
by  taking  from  Him  what  it  is  His  joy  to 
give  to  us. 


IX. 


CHRIST  SEEN  CALLING  FOR  A 
SPIRITUAL  TRUST:  THE  NOBLE- 
MAN AND  HIS  FAITH. 

John  iv.  43-S4- 

IT  was  in  search  of  quietude  that  Christ  had 
left  Judaea  on  that  journey  which  had  taken 
Him  through  the  Samaritan  country,  and  which 
He  is  now  about  to  complete.  In  that  fact  lies 
the  explanation  of  a  difficulty  which  the  form  of 
statement  in  these  forty-third  and  forty-fourth 
verses  may  at  first  appear  to  raise.  "  And  after 
the  two  days  he  went  forth  from  thence  into 
Galilee.  For  Jesus  himself  testified,  that  a 
prophet  hath  no  honour  in  his  own  country." 
But  if  He  would  have  no  honour  in  His  own 
country,  why  go  thither  ?    It  would  seem  to  be 

rather  a  reason  for  keeping  away.    The  journey 
109 


no  CHRIST  SEEN  CALLING 


had  been  commenced,  however,  as  at  the  outset 
of  this  chapter  John  has  told  us,  in  order  to 
escape  from  the  notoriety  which  was  coming  to 
be  attached  to  Jesus  among  the  Pharisees  as  the 
number  of  His  disciples  grew.  The  strain  of 
the  situation  was  becoming  too  great :  as  more 
frequent  accessions  to  the  ranks  of  His  followers 
were  received,  the  enmity  of  those  who  hated  Him 
would  develop  into  more  marked  and  definite 
form ;  and  Christ  departs,  therefore,  for  a  period 
of  quietude  and  relief,  seeking  it  in  His  own 
region,  where  He  was  more  likely  to  be  left  alone. 
They  who  had  known  Him  from  His  earliest 
years  would  be  the  last — as  a  man's  nearest 
kindred  usually  are  the  last  to  recognise  any- 
greatness  in  him — to  yield  Him  any  honour  or 
to  admit  that  aught  extraordinary  dwelt  in  Him ; 
and  in  Galilee  Christ  might  find  the  freedom  from 
publicity  which  for  a  while  He  desired. 

It  is  of  interest  to  note,  in  passing,  how 
absolutely  honest  John  is  as  he  compiles  his 
record  :  if  there  be  any  risk  to  his  main  purpose — 
the  purpose  of  winning  from  his  readers  faith  in 
Christ  as  the  Son  of  God — in  showing  Christ  thus 


FOR  A  SPIRITUAL  TRUST 


III 


retreating  for  a  time  of  rest  from  the  hostilities 
and  notorieties  of  the  world,  John  faces  the  risk : 
his  picture  is  to  be  complete,  not  securing  men's 
admiration  for  its  chief  figure  by  leaving  out 
any  lines  to  which  criticism  could  plausibly  take 
exception.  He  shows  the  Christ  seeking  even 
to  hide  Himself  for  a  while.  And  indeed,  what- 
ever the  first  impression  of  it  may  be — however 
strange  it  may  for  an  instant  appear  that  One 
who  claims  to  be  divine  should  shut  Himself 
away  from  human  relations  because  they  had 
become  too  straining  in  their  demands — yet  on 
second  thoughts  it  does  but  draw  us  with  all  the 
more  confidence  back  to  Christ  again.  For  one 
thing,  it  is  only  the  really  strong  who  can  afford 
to  show  what  may  be  mistaken  for  weakness 
by  those  who  do  not  understand :  the  man  who 
leads  when  he  ought  more  fittingly  to  be  humbly 
following,  the  man  who  has  thrust  himself  into 
a  position  of  eminence  for  which  he  has  no  real 
qualifications,  can  never  afford  to  relax,  even  for 
a  moment,  the  process  of  making  an  impression 
on  his  deluded  adherents :  let  there  be  a  second's 
hesitancy,  and  the  whole  imposture  is  likely  to  be 


112  CHRIST  SEEN  CALLING 


laid  bare.  It  is  in  itself  a  testimony  to  the 
greatness  of  Christ  that  He  can  in  this  fashion 
lay  His  leadership  down,  and  thereafter  calmly 
resume  it  once  more — show  what  might  have 
been  read  as  fear  by  the  hostile  Pharisees  in 
Judaea,  and  then  return  again  to  advance  His 
claims.  But  more  than  that,  the  very  dependence 
of  Christ  upon  God,  as  He  manifested  it  in  these 
retirements  from  the  world's  strain  and  stress,  in 
these  periods  when  He  sought  for  the  refreshment 
of  His  own  soul  (and  there  are  more  than  this 
one  noted  in  the  Gospel-story)  may  bring  us  to 
trust  Him  the  more.  For  as  one  notes  how,  in 
giving  to  man  what  He  had  to  give,  Christ  was 
Himself  receiving  it  first  of  all,  and  had  to  receive 
it,  in  His  own  communion  with  the  Father — how 
He  could  do  nothing  except  it  were  given  Him 
from  above — one  feels  that  in  coming  into  touch 
with  Christ  one  comes  into  touch  with  the  eternal 
Source  of  all.  He  returned  ceaselessly  to  the 
everlasting  and  authoritative  One,  and  lets  us  see 
Him  so  returning :  as  we  fasten  ourselves  to  Him 
we  reach,  therefore,  to  the  ultimate  ground  of 
things ;  and  the  very  fact  that  Christ  sought 


FOR  A  SPIRITUAL  THRUST  113 


sometimes  to  pass  into  quietude  that  He  might 
the  better  hear  His  Father's  voice  should  but 
make  us  more  alive  to  the  strength  and  certainty 
which  thrill  the  utterances  of  His  voice  to  us. 
Since  He  could  do  nothing  except  as  He  was 
bound  to  God,  they  who  bind  themselves  to  Him 
are  bound  to  God  in  Him. 

In  quest  of  retirement,  then,  Christ  went  to 
His  own  country.  As  it  chanced,  however,  re- 
tirement He  did  not  obtain  ;  for  with  His  arrival 
in  Galilee  came  the  request  from  the  nobleman 
for  healing  to  be  done  upon  his  son.  The  request 
was  of  course  a  natural  one ;  and  yet  Christ's 
answer  to  it  indicates  how  it  was  a  different 
sort  of  request  He  would  have  liked  to  hear. 
"  Except  ye  see  signs  and  wonders,  ye  will  in  no 
wise  believe."  Believe,  that  is,  in  the  sense  of 
accepting  Christ  as  He  would  be  accepted,  as  the 
supreme  revelation  of  God  and  consequently  the 
supreme  guide  of  life ;  for  the  nobleman  clearly 
believed  in  some  sense  already,  believed  at  any 
rate  in  Christ's  miraculous  power,  else  his  request 

would  not  have  been  made.    That  was,  in  fact, 
8 


114  CHRIST  SEEN  CALLING 


the  point  of  Christ's  utterance:  that  is  the  ex- 
planation of  His  tone  of  regret.  As  the  wonder- 
worker He  could  always  get  Himself  accepted,  so 
long  as  men  and  women  benefited  by  the  wonders 
He  worked ;  but  the  higher  faith,  which  was  in 
His  eyes  the  only  sign  of  true  surrender,  was  a 
far  more  difficult  thing  to  call  forth.  So  few  took 
Christ  because  of  what  He  was  :  so  few  saw  the 
regal  dignity,  the  divine  majesty,  the  commanding 
holiness,  in  Him,  or  bowed  down  before  these 
things.  It  was  only  through  signs  and  wonders 
that  the  most  could  be  brought  to  believe.  And 
Christ's  sorrow  over  this  second-rate  faith  was 
made  the  more  poignant  by  its  contrast  with  the 
faith  He  had  just  seen  where  it  was  less  likely  to 
exist.  The  Samaritans  had  believed  on  Him,  not 
for  His  mighty  works,  but  for  the  moral  grandeur 
they  had  discerned  in  Him — but  ye,  here  in  my 
own  country, "  except  ye  see  signs  and  wonders,  ye 
will  in  no  wise  believe."  Their  only  attitude  to  the 
Christ  was  an  attitude  of  expectancy  for  whatever 
might  come  from  Him  to  minister  to  their  selfish- 
ness ;  and  to  the  believing  which  carried  the  whole 
nature  over  to  Christ,  not  for  what  could  be  got 


FOR  A  SPIRITUAL  TRUST  115 


out  of  Him,  but  for  what  He  was  in  His  goodness, 
to  that  they  could  by  no  means  attain. 

Christ  is  never  satisfied  with  us  so  long  as  it  is 
only  the  miracles  He  works  for  us — whether  they 
be  miracles  affecting  our  condition  in  this  world 
or  in  the  next — that  draw  us  to  His  side.  In 
Christ's  own  estimate  of  things,  all  He  does  for 
us  by  way  of  making  us  happier  is  meant  to  be 
subservient  to  what  He  does  for  us  by  way  of 
making  us  better.  We  are  not  to  let  the  Christ 
make  us  better  because  He  evidently  has  the 
power  to  make  us  happier — that  is  our  frequent 
reading  of  the  matter;  but  we  are  to  find  the 
greater  happiness  that  He  can  give  come  to 
us  naturally,  and  without  our  thinking  about  it, 
through  receiving  the  greater  goodness  that  He  can 
give.  The  signs  and  wonders  of  Christ's  consola- 
tions and  Christ's  healings  are  not  to  be  the  most 
prominent  matters  in  our  relation  to  Him,  with 
His  spiritual  improvement  of  us  added  on  as  a 
sort  of  supplementary  affair :  that  is  to  turn  the 
whole  of  Christ's  ministry  upside  down.  He 
would  be  taken  by  us  as  the  One  whose  moral 
greatness,  when  He  stands  before  us,  draws  our 


ii6  CHRIST  SEEN  CALLING 


love  and  faith  upon  itself.  Amid  the  selfishness 
of  our  prayers  to  Him,  amid  our  readiness  to 
make  Him  the  servant  of  our  desires  rather  than 
to  be  ourselves  servants  to  His  spiritual  royalty, 
He  might  well  say  to  us,  "  Except  ye  see  signs 
and  wonders,  ye  will  in  no  wise  believe." 

But  the  nobleman,  too  distracted  to  analyse  the 
quality  of  his  relationship  to  Christ,  could  not,  at 
the  moment,  consider  the  meaning  of  what  Christ 
said,  and  had  only  an  added  word  of  pleading. 
"  Except  ye  see  signs  and  wonders,  ye  will  in  no 
wise  believe  " — "  Well,  I  do  not  know  what  that 
means,  but.  Sir,  come  down  ere  my  child  die." 
And  Christ  responded  to  his  pleading,  as  He 
will  always  respond  to  human  pleading,  be  the 
mood  which  prompts  it  imperfect  or  even  mean 
as  it  may.  And  then  the  nobleman,  with  his 
pleading  heard  and  his  son  restored,  grafted  the 
higher  faith  on  to  the  lower,  and  believed — in 
the  true  sense,  this  time — and  his  whole  house. 

Better  so,  of  course,  than  not  at  all.  Better 
reach  to  the  highest  faith  somehow,  even  though 
by  a  road  below  the  best,  than  not  reach  it  at  all. 


FOR  A  SPIRITUAL  TRUST  117 


The  lesson  stands  clear  for  us — that  every  miracle 
Christ  does  for  us  should  find  its  issue  in  our  truer 
spiritual  surrender  to  Him.  We  have  been  mean 
enough  in  that  our  faith  has  been  so  much  a  faith 
of  the  "  signs  and  wonders "  type :  it  would  be 
meaner  still  if,  when  the  signs  and  wonders  are 
wrought,  we  should  not  respond  to  the  spiritual 
greatness  of  the  Christ  who  has  responded  to 
our  selfish  prayers.  Let  all  that  Christ  does  for 
us,  in  making  us  happier,  be  employed  as  an 
impulse  to  consecration,  so  that  He  may  make 
us  holier.  And  if  the  gratification  of  our  selfish 
desires  be  thus  turned  into  a  means  of  grace,  the 
hour  will  come  at  last — and  better  late  than 
never — when  we  shall  believe  in  and  surrender 
to  Him,  not  for  what  He  bestows,  but  for  what 
He  is. 


X. 


THE  VOICE  OF  CHRISTS  CONSCIOUS- 
NESS:  "LIFE  IN  HIMSELF." 


ITH    the    commencement    of  this  fifth 


his  Gospel  which  may  be  called  entirely  new  in 
the  method  it  adopts.  Up  till  now  he  has  been 
looking  at  Christ  from  the  spectator's  point  of 
view,  taking  his  stand  with  those  whom  he  is 
seeking  to  convince  of  Christ's  divineness,  bidding 
them  gaze  now  upon  this  incident  and  now  upon 
that,  seeming  to  say,  "  Must  not  He  who  did 
these  things  have  been  in  very  truth  the  Son 
of  God  ? "  At  this  stage  he  changes  the  line 
of  treatment.  From  the  beginning  of  this  fifth 
chapter  down  to  the  end  of  the  tenth  John  dwells, 
not  in  the  consciousness  of  the  spectators  of 


John  v. 


chapter  John  enters  upon  a  section  of 


'*LIFE  IN  HIMSELF" 


Christ,  but  within  the  consciousness  of  Christ 
Himself.  He  has  been  speaking  about  Christ 
before:  now  Christ  speaks  for  Himself.  The 
foregoing  chapters  have  been  John  impressing 
upon  his  readers  what  men  saw  Christ  do  and 
what  men  heard  Christ  say :  these  following 
chapters  are  John  projecting  himself,  as  it  were, 
into  the  depths  of  Christ's  mind  and  feeling, 
and  revealing  what  goes  on  there.  The  great- 
ness of  Christ's  public  work  has  up  till  now 
been  thrown  upon  the  screen  :  the  greatness 
of  Christ's  own  inner  life,  the  greatness  He 
felt  Himself  to  possess,  is  now  called  upon 
to  come  forth  from  the  secrecies  of  Christ's 
heart. 

Christ  realising  Himself  to  be  the  actual  source 
and  Giver  of  life,  is  the  burden  of  the  whole 
of  the  present  chapter.  In  the  discourse  here 
recorded  Christ  states  literally  what  in  the 
subsequent  discourses  of  the  subsequent  chapters 
He  states  in  figures  of  speech — that  He  came  to 
impart  to  men  the  actual  life  He  held  within 
Himself.    The  source  and  Giver  of  life,  He  is 


I20    VOICE  OF  CHRIST'S  CONSCIOUSNESS 


here;  and  through  following  utterances  He 
speaks  of  Himself  as  the  Bread  of  life,  the  Giver 
of  living  water,  the  Light  of  the  world,  and  the 
Shepherd  of  the  sheep — all  of  the  metaphors 
tending  to  the  same  point,  that  He  came  to 
establish  an  absolute  union  between  Himself  and 
men,  to  instil  Himself  into  men  and  to  absorb 
men  into  Himself,  so  that  they  might  draw  their 
life  from  Him. 

The  source  and  Giver  of  life,  Christ  here 
declares  Himself  to  be.  The  whole  discourse 
arises  out  of  the  miracle  which  Christ  had 
wrought  upon  the  man  waiting  by  the  Bethesda 
pool,  the  miracle  whose  propriety  was  questioned 
by  the  Jews  because  it  was  wrought  upon  the 
sabbath  day.  Over  the  miracle  itself  we  need 
not  linger,  since  the  main  interest  of  the  chapter 
lies,  not  in  the  miracle,  but  in  the  great  sermon 
which,  in  answer  to  the  cavilling  of  His  adver- 
saries, Christ  preached.  It  was  at  Jerusalem,  of 
course,  that  the  sermon  was  delivered ;  and  it  is 
worthy  of  notice,  in  passing,  that  the  greatest  and 
profoundest  utterances  which  this  Gospel,  or  in- 
deed any  of  the  four  Gospels,  record,  were  drawn 


<*LIFE  IN  HIMSELF"  121 


from  Christ  by  the  pressures  of  hostile  criticism 
and  amid  the  angers  of  His  foes.  The  greater 
their  hostility,  so  much  the  greater  became  the 
range  of  His  thought  and  speech.  He  rose,  one 
might  say,  to  His  fullest  height,  just  when  the 
hands  of  men  were  most  fiercely  set  to  drag 
Him  down. 

In  the  twenty-sixth  verse  the  key  to  the  entire 
chapter  is  found.  "  For  as  the  Father  hath  life 
in  himself,  even  so  gave  he  to  the  Son  also  to 
have  life  in  himself."  That  is  how  and  why 
Christ  had  wrought  His  miracle  on  the  impotent 
man :  just  as  God  has  the  power  of  creating  other 
life  from  His  own,  so  the  Christ  has  power  to 
create  other  life  from  His  own ;  and  it  was  by 
the  exercise  of  that  power  that  He  created  life, 
new  physical  life,  in  the  man  whose  life  had 
been  so  long  spoilt  and  maimed.  It  is  only  by 
implication  that  Christ  notices  the  charge  of 
sabbath-breaking  which  the  Jews  had  launched 
at  His  head,  and  yet  the  implied  answer  is 
complete.  "  I  create  as  God  created ;  but  so 
long  as  God's  work  of  creation  went  on,  there 
was  no  sabbath :  the  sabbath  did  not  begin  until 


122    VOICE  OF  CHRISrS  CONSCIOUSNESS 


the  creative  work  was  done.  And  so  long  as  I 
set  the  creative  power  that  is  in  me  to  its  work, 
there  is  no  sabbath  for  me  to  break :  that  comes 
not  till  all  my  work  is  done."  But  leaving  that, 
Christ  in  this  discourse  raises  the  whole  thing 
above  all  questions  of  sabbath-breaking  and  even 
above  all  questions  of  physical  healing,  and  speaks 
from  the  lofty  level  of  One  who  would  have  man 
derive  life,  in  all  its  range,  from  the  life  in 
Himself.  "  For  as  the  Father  hath  life  in  him- 
self, even  so  gave  he  to  the  Son  also  to  have 
life  in  himself."  Just  as  surely  as  all  came 
from  God,  is  all  that  is  in  us  to  come  from  the 
Christ.  In  regard  to  all  the  moral  content  of 
our  natures,  Christ  would  be  repeating  every 
moment  the  creative  work  which  God  performed 
when  He  made  the  world.  The  spiritual  nature 
of  man  is  without  form  and  void  —  certainly 
without  its  fairest  form  and  void  of  its  best 
contents — until  Christ  comes  to  take  it  in  charge ; 
and  He  takes  it  in  charge,  not  by  altering  and 
improving  what  is  there,  tuning  up  the  notes 
which  have  dropped  out  of  tune,  tightening  the 
fibres  which  have  become  relaxed,  but  by  re- 


<^LIFE  IN  HIMSELF"  123 


producing  there  what  is  in  Himself.  "  Life  in 
himself" — enough  life  carried  in  the  Christ  to 
spread  itself  through  all  men  and  women  till 
time  shall  end.  He  not  only  corrects  human 
action,  but  gives  to  us,  out  of  Himself,  that 
whence  action  springs :  our  action  is  but  the 
revelation  and  outcome  of  what  we  are,  of  the 
life  behind  the  action ;  and  Christ  wants  to 
create  that  life  in  us  out  of  His  own.  He  not 
only  purifies  human  thought :  our  thought,  too, 
springs  out  of  the  life  in  us ;  and  Christ  wants 
to  create  that  life  in  us  out  of  His  own.  Life 
is  not  what  we  say  or  think  or  do :  these  are  but 
the  signs  of  life :  the  life  itself  is  the  root  from 
which  all  saying  and  thinking  and  doing  grow 
up,  the  hidden  reality  which  constitutes  the  / 
beneath  it  all.  And  Christ  wants  to  be  to  us  in 
such  a  relationship  that  what  constitutes  me  shall 
simply  have  been  transferred  out  of  what  con- 
stitutes Him,  He  has  life  in  Himself — is  ready 
and  willing  to  create  other  moral  and  spiritual 
personalities  out  of  His  own.  And  we,  would 
we  rightly  take  Him,  must  accept  Him  thus  in 
His  creative  power. 


124     VOICE  OF  CHRIST'S  CONSCIOUSNESS 

If  there  seem  to  be  any  vagueness  about  the 
idea,  it  is  only  because  it  is  so  great,  and  deals 
with  an  experience  out  of  the  common  run.  It  is 
most  assuredly  an  idea  to  the  contemplation  of 
which — and  to  the  experimental  realisation  of 
which — men  and  women  must  return,  if  they  are 
to  understand  Christ  as  He  would  be  understood. 
Christ  as  in  most  literal  truth  the  Giver  of  life — 
we  need  to  ponder  it,  till  the  strangeness  which 
hangs  over  it  is  dispelled.  We  need  a  frequent 
course  of  John's  Gospel,  so  that  we  may  the  better 
realise  how  Christ  conceived  of  His  relation  to 
men.  He  does  many  things  for  us,  the  benefit 
of  which  we  are  to  seize :  outside  of  us,  so  to  say, 
He  carries  on  many  a  ministry — did  so  through 
those  earthly  years  of  His,  does  so  now  through 
many  an  influence  He  sends  across  the  world  to 
draw  men  to  Him ;  but  all  He  does,  all  He  has 
ever  done,/t?r  us  is  but  the  preliminary  to  what 
He  would  do  in  us  ;  and  glad  as  He  is  to  draw 
us  to  Him,  He  is  not  wholly  satisfied  until,  having 
drawn  us  to  Him,  He  draws  us  into  Him  and  sets 
Himself  into  us.  And  the  Christian  Church  will 
not  know  the  deepest  Christian  secret  till  that 


**LIFE  IN  HIMSELF*'  125 


is  learnt.  Christ  has  life  in  Himself.  Out  of 
the  life  He  possesses  He,  creative  like  the  God 
from  whom  He  came,  would  create  life  in  us. 

It  is  under  the  guardianship  of  this  idea  that 
our  relationship  to  Christ  must  be  shaped  and 
maintained.  We  use  rightly  this  Christ  who  has 
life-creating  power  in  Him,  when  we  allow  Him 
to  seize  upon,  absorb  into  Himself,  all  that  we  are. 
To  relate  ourselves  truly  to  a  Christ  who  has  life 
in  Himself  can  mean  nothing  else  or  less  than  this 
— the  flinging  of  our  whole  being  into  His,  that 
in  that  communion  all  the  living  forces  in  Him 
may  exert  their  power  upon  our  submitted  souls. 
Any  other  relationship  to  Christ  is  insufficient — 
is  not  a  relationship  in  which  His  creative  power 
is  known.  Some  even  of  the  standard  words  in 
which  we  attempt  to  describe  what  the  heart  and 
mind  and  soul  ought  to  do  with  Christ — although 
correct  enough,  and  adequate,  when  their  full 
significance  is  grasped  —  are,  in  our  common 
understanding  of  them,  inadequate  and  incorrect ; 
and  our  relation  to  Christ  is  not  represented  by 
them  in  its  completeness.  This  Christ  has  life 
in  Himself — how  shall  we,  as  it  were,  get  the 


126    VOICE  OF  CHRISrS  CONSCIOUSNESS 


most  out  of  Him,  see  to  it  that  none  of  this  strong, 
living,  creative  force  in  Him  is  permitted  to  waste  ? 
Believe  in  Him — have  faith  in  Him — will  these 
phrases  do  ?  Not  if  they  are  interpreted  as 
meaning  simply  that  we  are  to  assent  to  the 
truth  of  what  He  says,  rest  upon  the  sufficiency 
of  what  He  does,  quiet  ourselves  by  declaring 
that  He  knows  what  we  do  not  know  and  per- 
forms what  is  beyond  our  power.  We  may  have 
that  mood  of  entire  faith  towards  Him,  and  still 
not  be  submitting  our  nature  and  life  to  the  grip 
of  the  creative  God-nature  and  God-life  in  Him. 
Learn  of  Him — will  that  word  do  ?  Not  if  it  be 
taken  as  meaning  simply  that  we  are  to  give  fixed 
attention  to  whatever  proceeds  from  His  lips,  to 
write  indelibly  upon  heart  and  mind  the  truths 
He  dictates  to  us  as  we  set  ourselves  as  pupils  at 
His  feet.  These  things  we  may  do,  and  still  not 
be  permitting  the  life  in  Him  to  enfold  and  be 
substituted  for  the  life  in  us.  Love  Him — will 
that  do  ?  Not  if  it  signifies  only  that  we  are  to 
cherish  His  presence  as  the  most  precious  treasure 
of  life,  to  cling  round  Him  with  an  earnest 
passion  which  does  not  even  for  an  instant  cool 


'^LIFE  IN  HIMSELF" 


127 


or  forget.  Even  with  that  heat  of  affection  we 
may  love  Him,  and  still  not  have  the  nature  in 
Him  absorbing  the  nature  in  us.  But  this  Christ 
who  has  life  in  Himself  is  rightly  used  when  we 
hand  over  our  whole  selves  in  order  that  the  life 
in  Him  may  transform  the  self  and  re-create  it, 
when  the  personality  in  us  drops  into  the  person- 
ality in  Him,  when  the  life  in  Him  has  us  absolutely 
in  its  power  for  working  out  its  will.  This  life- 
creating  Christ  must  be  One  to  whose  life  and 
nature,  in  their  wholeness,  our  life  and  nature, 
in  their  wholeness,  are  given  up. 

Experience  easily  misses  this — and  fails,  in 
consequence,  to  provide  us  with  testimony  to  the 
truth  of  this  voice  which  out  of  Christ's  inmost 
consciousness  struck  upon  the  ears  of  men.  It  is 
not  an  easy  thing  to  surrender  the  whole  nature 
to  the  play  of  another.  To  set  our  life  under 
the  grip  of  another  life,  and  then  to  abandon  all 
attempt  at  interfering  with  the  influence  of  that 
other  life  upon  ours,  is  not  such  a  simple  thing : 
we  are  too  restless,  too  prone  to  put  forth  our 
hands  when  they  ought  to  be  still  and  to  speak 
when  we  ought  to  be  silent — too  anxious  to  make 


128    VOICE  OF  CHRIST'S  CONSCIOUSNESS 


ourselves  instead  of  letting  ourselves  be  made — 
for  that.  And  this  life-creating  Christ  does  not 
do  for  us  all  He  might,  because  we  do  not  truly 
adjust  our  lives  to  His.  We  easily  bring  our- 
selves into  some  sort  of  relationship  with  Christ ; 
and,  because  it  is  impossible  to  be  in  any  sincere 
relationship  with  Christ  without  being  the  better 
for  it,  we  rejoice  over  the  grace  which  even  our 
imperfect  relationship  bestows,  and  forget  the 
grace  which  through  the  imperfection  of  our  rela- 
tionship we  lose.  All  is  not  done  on  our  part, 
and  all  is  not  done  on  the  Christ's  part,  until 
we  transcend  all  other  relations,  and  rise  into  this 
relation — or  fall  into  this  relation,  should  rather 
be  said — the  relation  of  surrendering  all  we  are 
to  the  play  and  influence  and  re-creative  power 
of  all  He  is.  Many  steps  we  may  have  climbed 
up  the  ladder  that  brings  us  near  to  Christ — has 
the  last  flight  been  taken,  the  flight  which  carries 
our  life  to  nestle  in  the  deepest  recesses  of  His 
own  ? 

Of  course  any  consciousness  which  could  speak 
like  this,  and  with  justice,  must  be  the  conscious- 


'*LIFE  IN  HIMSELF'' 


ness  of  the  Son  of  God.  To  create  is  God's  own 
prerogative:  whoso  truthfully  claims  to  create 
must  be  indeed  divine.  Man  alters  what  already 
exists,  combines  the  present  material  into  new 
shapes,  cuts  and  carves  and  uses  what  lies  to  his 
hand ;  but  he  has  not  done  one  single  creative  act 
since  the  world's  history  began.  Man  cannot 
truly  make.  But  Christ's  claim  for  Himself  is 
that  He  can  create  life  in  us.  And  if  they 
who  let  Him  do  His  work  upon  them  find  that, 
in  proportion  to  their  surrender,  He  does  indeed 
transform  the  basis  of  being  in  them  into  some- 
thing new — gives  them,  not  only  new  thoughts, 
new  ideals,  new  programmes  of  conduct,  new 
inspirations  (all  that  is  far  short  of  creation,  and 
could  be  done  by  any  human  reformer  possessed 
of  the  necessary  human  knowledge  and  character 
and  skill),  but  a  new  life — they  are  entitled  to 
say  that  He  who  has  wrought  this  work  in  them 
must  be  from  above. 


9 


XI. 


THE  VOICE  OF  CHRISPS  CONSCIOUS- 
NESS: "THE  BREAD  OF  LIFE." 


E  saw,  as  we    looked   at  the  previous 


chapter  Christ  was  giving  definite  proclamation 
to  the  central  fact  that  the  life  in  Himself  was 
to  be  handed  over  to  form  the  life  in  man. 
As  God  exercised  creative  power,  so  was  Christ 
going  to  exercise  creative  power  in  those  who 
rightly  surrendered  themselves  to  His  spell. 
We  noted  also  that  in  some  of  these  subse- 
quent chapters,  and  in  the  discourses  they 
contain,  Christ  repeats  the  same  fact  in  more 
figurative  fashion,  declaring  Himself  to  be  the 
Bread  of  life,  the  Water  of  life,  the  Light  of  the 
world,  and  the  Shepherd  of  the  sheep — all  the 


John  vi. 


chapter  of   the    Gospel,  that  in  that 


<*THE  BREAD  OF  LIFE"  131 

metaphors  leading  in  the  same  direction  and 
tending  to  the  same  point,  namely,  that  the 
true  relationship  between  man  and  Christ  is  a 
relationship  in  which  man  does  nothing  less 
than  assimilate  Christ  into  himself  and  live  by 
Him.  In  this  sixth  chapter  it  is  as  the  bread 
of  life  that  Christ  declares  Himself,  as  the  food 
whereof  man  must  partake  if  life  in  man  is  to  be 
sustained  at  its  true  level  and  in  possession  of 
its  true  qualities ;  and  the  fiftieth  verse  of  the 
chapter  may  be  taken  as  supplying  the  key- 
note of  the  whole,  "  This  is  the  bread  which 
cometh  down  out  of  heaven,  that  a  man  may 
eat  thereof,  and  not  die"  The  utterance  finds 
its  starting-point,  as  did  the  preceding  utterance, 
in  a  miracle  which  Christ's  power  had  wrought, 
and  which  Christ  takes  for  a  text  whereon  to 
base  His  words.  He  had  fed  the  multitude, 
not  with  bread  that  sustained  the  soul,  but  with 
bread  that  could  nourish  the  body  only;  and 
as  the  crowd,  remembering  how  easily  He  had 
answered  to  their  physical  need,  seek  Him  out 
again,  His  thought  passes  away  from  the 
physical  life  in  them,  to  which  He  had  given 


132     VOICE  OF  CHRISrS  CONSCIOUSNESS 


its  needed  bread,  to  that  other  life  in  them,  for 
which  they  were  caring  so  little,  to  which  He 
would  give  its  needed  bread  too — for  which  He 
would  be  Himself  the  needed  bread.  "  Ye  seek 
me  .  .  .  because  ye  ate  of  the  loaves,  and  were 
filled.  Work  not  for  the  meat  which  perisheth, 
but  for  the  meat  which  abideth  unto  eternal  life, 
which  the  Son  of  man  shall  give  unto  you." 
Could  He  but  make  them  see  how  in  Him  they 
might  look  for  the  sustenance,  not  alone  of  the 
physical  nature,  but  of  the  spiritual  nature  for 
which  they  as  yet  felt  no  concern !  For  the 
inner  life  of  the  soul  and  spirit.  He  was  the 
bread  which  came  down  out  of  heaven,  that  a 
man  might  eat  thereof,  and  not  die. 

What  suggestion  emerges  from  the  phrases,  to 
assist  us  in  comprehending  the  relation  in  which 
Christ  desires  to  stand  with  the  natures  of  men  ? 
He  is  the  bread  of  life — thinks  of  Himself  as 
actually  the  nourishment  whereby  the  life  of  the 
soul  and  spirit  is  kept  strong  and  undying.  As 
the  physical  frame  receives  into  itself  the  bread 
which  repairs  the  lost  strength  and  restores  those 


'*THE  BREAD  OF  LIFE"  133 


elements  in  the  physical  frame  which  under  the 
demands  of  living  have  wasted  away,  so  must  the 
spiritual  frame — all  the  aggregate  of  moral  im- 
pulse and  all  that  goes  to  make  character  and 
all  that  constitutes  the  personality  in  us — receive 
the  Christ  into  itself,  would  we  be  sure  that  it 
shall  never  fail.  Christ's  thought  of  Himself  as 
the  bread  of  life  goes  far  beyond  any  idea  of  His 
teaching  strengthening  us  to  live  rightly,  or  of 
His  influence  guarding  us  against  whatever  would 
destroy  the  best  life  in  us,  or  of  His  inspiration 
vivifying  us  so  that  far  reaches  of  spiritual  life, 
which  have  been  hitherto  outside  our  attempting, 
may  be  brought  within  our  compass  now :  not 
alone  is  the  soul  to  take  gifts  from  Him,  but  of 
Himself  must  the  soul  partake,  as  truly  as  the 
body  partakes  of  the  bread  by  which  it  wards  off 
the  ever-threatening  touch  of  decay  and  death. 
"  He  that  eateth  me,  he  also  shall  live  because  of 
me."  "  /  am  the  bread  of  life."  The  life  of  true 
relationship  to  Christ  is  made  by  the  assimilation 
of  Christ.  The  phrase  may  need  to  be  somewhat 
qualified  and  guarded  presently;  but  for  the 
moment  let  it  stand.    The  moral  and  spiritual 


134     VOICE  OF  CHRISrS  CONSCIOUSNESS 


life  in  us  is  to  feed  on  the  Christ.  All  that 
makes  character  in  us  must  adopt  Him  for  its 
food,  and,  as  our  character  works  Him  into  itself, 
unites  Him  with  itself,  feeds  upon  Him,  our 
character  will  truly  live.  Would  we  be  related 
to  the  Christ  with  the  relationship  round  which 
here  His  thought  is  ranging,  there  must  be  the 
actual  taking  in  of  Christ ;  for  He  is  the  bread  of 
life. 

If  it  be  said  that  this  looks  in  the  direction 
of  mysticism,  it  is  to  be  replied  that  this  mysti- 
cism at  any  rate  saves  the  responsibility  of 
the  soul  unimpaired,  preserves  its  individuality 
well  defined,  and  not  only  leaves  room  for,  but 
requires,  effort  definite  and  direct.  If  Christ 
be  life's  bread,  then  in  order  to  secure  for  our- 
selves whatever  Christ  has  to  bestow,  and  to 
secure  it  permanently,  there  must  be  activity, 
deliberate  and  earnest  activity,  on  our  side  of 
the  relationship ;  for  bread  does  not  give  itself  to 
man  in  his  need.  He  who  will  make  no  effort  to 
obtain,  who  keeps  his  hands  hanging  inactive  at 
his  side,  might  starve  with  abundance  all  around. 


'<THE  BREAD  OF  LIFE''  135 


Bread  must  be  seized  upon,  or  we  die.  And  it 
may  be  that  Christ  wanted  to  set  up  this  idea 
of  Himself  as  bread  which  must  be  deliberately- 
taken,  for  the  complement — not  by  any  means 
the  contradiction,  but  the  complement  —  of  the 
idea  of  the  preceding  discourse,  the  idea  of 
Himself  as  the  Creator  of  life.  The  Creator  and 
Giver  of  life  in  us,  is  He  ?  Oh !  then  we  have 
only  to  let  Him  do  His  creative  work  in  us,  and 
religion  may  become  a  sort  of  emotionalism. 
This  life  of  His  to  be  transferred  to,  created  in, 
us — the  idea  might  throw  us  into  inactive  mood 
by  the  very  beauty  and  poetry  of  it,  and  by  its 
suggestion  of  all-sufficient  power  in  Christ ;  and 
we  might  content  ourselves  with  simply  waiting 
in  rapt  expectancy  for  that  new  life  to  be  born. 
But  take  the  other  figure.  He  is  the  bread  of 
life ;  and  that  must  rouse  us ;  for  bread  does 
nothing  for  man  except  as  man  goes  forth  for  it 
and  seizes  upon  it  and  makes  it  his  own.  Christ 
is  to  live  in  us ;  but  He  will  not  do  so  through 
any  of  our  poetic  imaginations  about  Him,  or 
through  any  of  our  entranced  admirations  of 
Him,  or  through  anything   less  than  our  de- 


136     VOICE  OF  CHRIST'S  CONSCIOUSNESS 


liberate  taking  of  Him  into  ourselves.  The 
needed  thing  is  to  set  ourselves  in  presence  of 
the  Christ,  and  then  with  conscious  purpose  to 
adopt  Him  into  us.  "  I  call  in  Thy  will  to 
envelop  and  supplant  mine  own.  I  take  Thy 
spirit  and  cover  up  mine  own  therewith.  I  draw 
in,  so  far  as  the  power  to  do  so  lies  in  me,  I 
draw  in  Thy  heart  to  beat  with  mine.  And  all 
that  Thou  art,  I  summon  to  come  in  and  pervade 
me  through  and  through,  till  in  me  there  shall  be 
nothing  which  does  not  live  by  the  feeding  of  my 
nature  upon  Thine."  Christ  is  the  bread  of  life, 
and  must  therefore  be  deliberately  seized  upon  by 
those  who  would  possess  the  life  which  in  Him  is 
stored  up. 

In  the  fact  that  bread  needs  ever  to  be  re- 
taken lies  yet  another  call  to  effort  from  the 
Christ-fed  soul.  As  bread  for  the  sustenance  of 
the  physical  nature  has  to  be  constantly  ob- 
tained in  fresh  supplies,  so  our  relationship  with 
Christ  has  to  be  constantly  re-formed  and  re- 
started, with  a  repetition  of  the  act  whereby  it 
was  first  made.  The  "  finished  work  of  Christ " 
is  one    of  the    standard    phrases   of  religious 


**THE  BREAD  OF  LIFE"  137 


speech — and  a  phrase  which  is,  of  course,  in  the 
right  understanding  of  it,  entirely  valid  and  true : 
only  one  needs  to  set  over  against  the  truth  of  it 
this  other  truth,  that  if  Christ's  work  in  regard 
to  us  has  been  finished  once  for  all,  our  work  in 
regard  to  Him  is  never  finished,  but  must  be 
ever  re-done.  Once  for  all  He  has  lived  His 
life  for  man  and  died  His  death  for  man  and  set 
Himself  in  His  resurrection  life  before  the  world 
in  order  that  He  may  be  changelessly  the 
Saviour  for  man ;  but  we  have  to  repeat  the 
acts  of  uniting  faith  and  love  and  surrender  by 
which  there  pass  into  us  the  benefits  of  His 
completed  work.  You  cannot  take  bread  to- 
day, and  expect  the  physical  life  in  you  to  be 
sustained  to  its  end  by  to-day's  partaking :  you 
cannot  say  with  any  truth  or  reason  that  in  one 
act  of  faith  in  Christ  or  of  acceptance  of  Christ 
your  spiritual  condition  has  been  put  beyond 
all  fear  of  weakness  and  failure  for  all  time.  If 
Christ  be,  as  He  declares  Himself  to  be,  the 
bread  of  life,  then  the  spiritual  nature  in  us — 
however  joyfully  it  may  have  once  partaken  of 
the  holy  feast — cannot  endure  with  its  strength 


138    VOICE  OF  CHRIST'S  CONSCIOUSNESS 


unabated  unless  moment  by  moment  it  reaches 
out,  with  no  diminution  of  its  first  energy,  for  new 
supplies  of  the  bread  which  is  its  staff  and  stay. 

But  as  Christ's  mind  moves  round  this 
relationship  He  wants  to  sustain  to  the  souls  of 
men,  His  thought  sounds  a  further  depth.  He 
is  the  bread  of  life,  but  not  only  that.  He  is 
the  living  bread.  "  I  am  the  living  bread  which 
came  down  from  heaven." 

It  is  an  indication  that  the  analogy  of  the 
food  by  which  the  physical  nature  maintains 
itself  fails  somewhat  after  all.  The  relations 
between  Christ  and  the  soul  become  too  profound 
for  the  relations  between  earthly  bread  and  the 
physical  frame  to  supply  any  complete  likeness 
to  them  ;  for  the  physical  life  is  sustained  by  that 
which  itself  has  no  life,  while  the  spiritual  life,  the 
soul,  is  sustained  by  that  which  is  itself  living. 
What  it  comes  to  is  this — that  at  each  taking  in 
of  Christ  we  are  not  so  much  repairing  and  main- 
taining the  spiritual  life  that  is  already  within 
us,  as  adopting  new  spiritual  life  from  Him : 
receiving  the  Christ  into  ourselves,  there  follows, 


**THE  BREAD  OF  LIFE"  139 


not  the  transforming  of  His  life  into  ours — as 
the  analogies  of  bodily  sustenance  would  suggest 
— but  the  transforming  of  our  life  into  His.  The 
bread  wherein  the  soul  finds  its  nourishment  is 
itself  living,  and  so  it  is  the  life  in  the  bread 
taking  hold  upon  the  soul,  absorbing  the  soul's 
life  into  itself,  rather  than  the  soul  taking  hold 
upon  the  bread.  It  was  said  that  the  life 
of  true  relationship  to  Christ  is  made  by  the 
assimilation  of  Christ  as  the  food  of  the  inner 
life :  more  accurate  still  is  it  to  say  that  the  life 
of  true  relationship  to  Christ  is  made  through 
being  assimilated  by  the  Christ ;  for  He  is  the 
living  bread.  The  spiritual  life  within  us  must 
reach  out  after  the  Christ  who  is  its  only  sufficient 
food,  and  must  bring  the  Christ  close  upon  itself. 
But  then  the  relation  is  perfected,  not  after  all 
by  the  soul  taking  the  Christ  into  itself,  but 
by  the  soul  allowing  itself  to  be  taken  into  the 
Christ.  Since  the  bread  whereon  the  spirit  lives 
is  itself  most  living,  the  spirit  has  not  to  win  life 
from  it,  but  to  be  enfolded  by  the  life  in  it ;  and 
our  feeding  upon  Christ  comes  to  be  the  passing 
of  all  the  elements  and  forces  of  character  in  us 


I40     VOICE  OF  CHRIST'S  CONSCIOUSNESS 


into  the  life  and  character  in  Him,  and  losing 
themselves  there. 

Immortality  is  implied  in  this  conception  of 
the  relations  between  Christ  and  the  soul.  "  This 
is  the  bread  which  cometh  down  out  of  heaven, 
that  a  man  may  eat  thereof,  and  not  die."  The 
life  which  feeds  upon  an  undying  life  must  itself 
be  undying.  The  physical  life  must  cease  when 
it  can  no  longer  renew  and  repair  itself  from 
something  beyond ;  for  all  that  earthly  bread  can 
do  is  to  maintain  life  that  is  already  there — to 
maintain  it,  not  to  give  it.  The  whole  thing 
depends  upon  our  power  to  make  life  for  ourselves 
out  of  the  bread  whereof  we  partake;  and,  with 
that  power  lost,  life  cannot  endure.  But  par- 
taking of  this  living  bread,  deathless  and  im- 
mortal the  spirit  must  most  surely  be ;  for  from 
the  living  bread  new  and  inexhaustible  supplies 
of  life  are  evermore  to  be  won.  It  is  no  more 
a  question  as  to  how  long  our  power  of  obtain- 
ing life  for  ourselves  and  maintaining  life  within 
ourselves  can  persist :  it  is  but  a  question  as  to 
how  long  life  will  continue  to  pass  into  us  from 


<'THE  BREAD  OF  LIFE"  141 

Him  who  is  life's  source ;  and  since  He  is  the  living 
bread  which  came  down  from  heaven,  where  is 
the  eternal  source  of  all  life,  life  for  the  soul  that 
feeds  upon  Him  can  never  fail.  Immortality  is 
the  spirit's  assured  heritage,  since  it  depends, 
not  primarily  on  what  we  are,  but  on  what  that 
Christ  is,  from  whom  our  spirits  live.  Immortal 
with  God's  own  immortality  is  He :  the  life 
He  possesses,  wherewith  He  feeds  His  own,  is 
come  down  out  of  heaven ;  and  therefore,  "  If 
any  man  eat  of  this  bread,  he  shall  live  for 
ever." 

From  the  commonest,  most  ordinary  act  of  our 
daily  living — the  simple  act  by  which  we  nourish 
and  keep  healthful  the  physical  frame — Christ 
would  thus  have  us  learn  something  as  to  the 
nourishing  and  keeping  healthful  of  the  spiritual 
constitution  wherein  our  true  life  lies.  He  is  the 
bread  which  came  down  out  of  heaven  in  order 
that,  by  their  partaking  of  it,  the  eternal  life  of 
heaven  may  become  the  portion  of  dying  men. 
Yet  He  is  the  living  bread,  so  that  the  accepting 
soul  transforms,  not  Him  into  itself,  but  itself  into 


142    VOICE  OF  CHRISTS  CONSCIOUSNESS 


Him.  Whoso  realises  his  dependence  upon  the 
Christ  who  is  the  spirit's  true  sustenance,  and 
whoso  sets  himself  to  partake  of  the  Christ  as 
in  His  sacramental  love  He  offers  Himself,  shall 
hunger  no  more. 


XII. 


THE  VOICE  OF  CHRISTS  CONSCIOUS- 
NESS: "LIVING  WATER." 


S  in  the  sixth  chapter  Jesus  has  proclaimed 


^  Himself  to  be  the  living  bread,  so  in  this 
seventh  chaper  He  proclaims  Himself  to  be  the 
living  water ;  and  therein  the  essential  significance 
of  the  chapter  is  to  be  sought  and  found.  True, 
it  is  not  until  the  chapter  reaches  its  thirty- 
seventh  verse  that  the  record  of  the  proclamation 
appears ;  but  all  that  has  gone  before  has  been 
designed  to  lead  up  to  that ;  and  one  sees  how 
Christ,  through  all  the  preceding  incidents  of  the 
chapter,  has  had  in  mind  the  intention  of  spring- 
ing the  proclamation  of  Himself  as  the  water 
of  life  upon  those  who  might  hear  Him  in  the 
Temple  courts.     His  brethren — those  brethren 


John  vii. 


144    VOICE  OF  CHRISrS  CONSCIOUSNESS 


who  had  not  yet  brought  themselves  to  believe 
in  Him — wanted  Him  to  give  so  signal  a  proof 
of  His  Messiahship  that  their  uncertainty  about 
Him  might  be  swept  away.  So  at  the  com- 
mencement of  the  chapter  we  find  them  saying 
to  Him,  "  If  thou  doest  these  things,  manifest 
thyself  to  the  world."  If  He  were  the  Messiah 
in  truth,  let  Him  give  the  signs  of  Messiahship 
for  which  the  people  were  waiting  and  expectant : 
then  the  brethren  and  all  the  rest  would  find 
themselves  forced  to  believe.  But  "  Jesus  there- 
fore said  unto  them.  My  time  is  not  yet  come." 
This  sort  of  manifestation — such  a  proof  of  His 
claim  as  they  would  hold  satisfactory — He  would 
not  give :  He  would  not  take  His  way  to 
Jerusalem  with  any  idea  of  setting  up  and 
occupying  such  a  Messianic  throne  as  the  mass 
of  the  nation  desired  to  see.  For  His  purposes, 
such  a  throne  would  be  worthless :  it  was  a 
different  Messiahship  that  constituted  Christ's 
ideal.  Still,  He  meant  to  go  up  to  this  feast, 
not  to  conform  to  their  purposes,  but  to  carry 
out  His  own ;  and  "  when  his  brethren  were 
gone  up  unto  the  feast,  then  went  he  up  also, 


LIVING  WATER 


145 


not  publicly,  but  as  it  were  in  secret"  Then, 
through  the  days  of  the  feast,  He  "  went  up  into 
the  temple,  and  taught" — preparing  the  way,  by 
those  teachings  recorded  in  the  body  of  the 
chapter,  for  the  supreme  announcement  which 
at  the  end  He  meant  to  make.  And  as  the 
last  day,  the  great  day  of  the  feast,  dawned,  the 
opportunity  for  which  He  had  been  waiting  was 
reached,  and  "  Jesus  stood  and  cried,  saying,  If 
any  man  thirst,  let  him  come  unto  me,  and 
drink."  It  was  in  order  to  make  that  proclama- 
tion that  Christ  had  guided  His  way  to  Jerusalem, 
and  had  mingled  with  the  crowds  which  were 
gathered  in  the  city  for  the  season  of  the 
feast. 

It  must  be  recollected  that  all  who  heard 
would  at  once  attach  a  very  definite  meaning 
to  this  call  of  Christ's :  to  none  of  them  could 
there  be  any  obscurity  about  its  metaphor :  to 
a  Jewish  mind  the  utterance  must  have  been 
perfectly  clear,  and  must  have  rung  out  as  an 
explicit  claim  on  Christ's  part  to  be  the  Messiah 
for  whose  advent  the  nation  hoped.    Christ  did 

lO 


146    VOICE  OF  CHRIST'S  CONSCIOUSNESS 


after  all  go  up  to  the  feast  to  manifest  Himself 
as  the  Messiah,  although  not  in  the  manner  His 
brethren  wished  Him  to  adopt. 

This  feast  was  a  kind  of  symbolic  repre- 
sentation of  a  portion  of  Israel's  past  history, 
commemorating  the  nation's  sojourn  in  the 
desert  and  its  entrance  into  the  promised  land. 
For  seven  days  the  people  lived  in  tents  or 
booths,  recalling  thus  the  time  when  their 
ancestors  had  dwelt  homelessly  in  the  desert : 
at  the  end  of  the  feast,  on  its  last  day,  they 
went,  as  the  close  of  the  chapter  has  it,  "  every 
man  unto  his  own  house,"  recalling  how,  when 
the  desert  homelessness  was  past,  the  nation 
had  taken  possession  of  its  own.  Besides  that 
general  symbolism,  there  was  another  rite  con- 
nected with  the  feast  which  led  up  with  perfect 
naturalness  to  Christ's  declaration  of  Himself  as 
the  living  water.  On  each  of  the  seven  days, 
water  was  drawn  in  a  vessel  of  gold  from  the 
pool  of  Siloam,  and  then  borne  in  joyful  pro- 
cession to  the  Temple  to  be  there  poured  forth, 
as  a  remembrance  of  the  mercy  with  which  God 
had  caused  water  to  be  brought  out  of  the  rock 


LIVING  WATER" 


147 


in  the  people's  desert  years.  But  on  the  last 
day,  since  that  day  commemorated  the  entry 
into  Canaan,  this  rite  was  not  observed :  water 
needed  to  be  obtained  from  the  rock  no  more, 
since  the  land  with  freely-flowing  streams  had 
been  attained.  More  than  that.  It  was  an 
article  of  Israel's  Messianic  hope  that,  just  as  the 
waters  of  Canaan  had  been  opened  to  them  after 
the  droughts  of  the  desert,  so  when  the  Messiah 
came — when  the  dryness  of  the  period  of  ex- 
pectation was  past — a  fountain  of  water  would 
miraculously  spring  up  within  the  Temple  itself, 
signifying  that  the  time  of  perfect  refreshing 
had  arrived.  It  is  clear,  therefore,  what  Christ's 
words  must  have  meant  to  the  crowds.  "  We 
are  here,  longing  for  the  day  when  that  fountain 
shall  break  forth  in  this  Temple  of  ours,  because 
we  shall  know  then  that  our  Messiah  is  come 
indeed.  And  this  man  is  calling  us  to  find  the 
fountain  in  him !  We  expect  the  water  that 
is  the  sign  of  our  perfected  life  to  well  up  here 
in  this  Temple :  he  cries.  If  any  man  thirst,  let 
him  come  unto  me,  and  drink  !  That  can  only 
mean  that  he  claims  to  be  the  Messiah  himself  1  " 


148     VOICE  OF  CHRIST'S  CONSCIOUSNESS 


And  of  course  they  would  rightly  interpret 
Christ's  utterance  in  reasoning  so.  He  claimed 
to  be  the  reality  whereof  that  fountain  for  whose 
birth  they  were  looking  would  have  been  the 
sign,  had  it  sprung  forth.  He  claimed  to  be 
the  One  to  whom  their  history  had  been  point- 
ing, the  One  in  whom  all  their  aspirations — if 
only  they  interpreted  their  aspirations  aright — 
were  fulfilled. 

To  conjure  up  the  circumstances  in  this 
manner  before  our  eyes  gives  us  added  power 
to  understand  more  completely  the  significance 
of  Christ's  proclamation  of  Himself  as  the  living 
water.  And  what  that  proclamation  meant,  or 
should  have  meant,  to  these  hearers  of  Christ's 
own  time  it  means,  or  should  mean,  to  us,  the 
hearers  of  this  present  time,  which  is  indeed 
Christ's  own  time  still.  How  does  the  relation- 
ship between  Christ  and  the  soul  of  man  present 
itself  to  us  in  the  light  of  the  proclamation 
which  this  chapter  records  ? 

Christ's  declaration  that  He  would  make  the 
living  water  to  spring  up  emphasises  the  fact 


LIVING  WATER" 


149 


that  in  His  relationship  to  the  individual  soul 
the  soul  finds  an  entirely  new  era  to  be  begun. 
It  was  the  hope  of  Israel  that  when  the  fountain 
for  which  they  looked  should  flow,  when  there 
should  come  the  Messiah  at  whose  advent  the 
looked-for  fountain  was  to  arise,  their  national 
life  would  be,  not  merely  improved,  but  trans- 
formed, finding  wholly  new  activities,  being 
directed  upon  wholly  new  ideals ;  and  Christ's 
declaration  of  Himself  as  the  true  spring  indi- 
cated that  He  looked  on  Himself  as  bringing  an 
entire  transformation  of  life  for  the  nation  to 
receive.  When  Christ  claims  to  have  the  living 
water  in  Himself,  He  means  that  His  gift  of 
Himself  to  us  involves,  not  simply  improve- 
ment, but  newness.  With  our  relation  to  Him  we 
commence  an  absolutely  fresh  chapter.  We  are 
to  take  Him  with  a  larger  hope  in  the  taking 
than  the  hope  that  He  will  make  a  few  cor-, 
rections  here  and  there,  or  touch  up  for  us  this 
point  and  that.  His  coming  to  us  is  the  spring- 
ing up  of  a  quite  new  stream  of  life,  on  whose 
bosom  we  must  allow  ourselves  to  be  borne. 
And  if  we  realise  that,  it  makes  our  relationship 


ISO    VOICE  OF  CHRISrS  CONSCIOUSNESS 


with  Christ  an  altogether  more  hopeful  thing. 
If  He  came  only  to  repair,  to  add  on  something 
to  what  is  in  us  already,  our  real  life  would  not 
be  taken  very  far  beyond  the  stage  it  has 
reached.  But  if  our  relation  to  Christ  marks  a 
fresh  beginning,  an  attachment  of  us  to  a  source 
of  life  wholly  new,  then  our  possibilities  stretch 
further  and  our  hopes  of  living  indeed  may 
mount  higher  and  our  flow  of  life  must  become 
as  great  and  pure  as  the  flow  of  life  from  that 
source  can  be.  Christ  must  be  taken  as  the 
beginning  of  a  new  chapter  for  us — or  as  the 
beginning  of  a  new  book,  perhaps  it  would  be 
better  still  to  say.  We  must  give  ourselves  to 
Him,  not  to  be  improved,  but  in  order  that  an 
absolutely  fresh  spring  of  life  may  be  opened  for 
us  in  Him. 

It  was,  besides,  a  ceaseless  and  inexhaustible 
fountain  on  whose  up-springing  the  national  hope 
was  set ;  and  in  declaring  that  the  true  fountain 
was  in  Him,  Christ  declared  that  the  relationship 
of  human  souls  to  Him  was  no  temporary  ex- 
pedient, but  a  method  of  life  which  could  not  fail 


LIVING  WATER 


and  which  would  suffice  for  all  time.  Our  spiritual 
nature  needs  to  find  some  means  of  sustaining 
itself  to  which  it  shall  be  able  to  cling  fast :  we 
have  tried  experiments  enough,  found  many  ways 
of  bringing  an  apparent  and  temporary  satisfaction 
to  the  needs  of  the  soul,  and  then  discovered  that 
the  seeming  satisfaction  was  a  delusion  and  a 
snare :  our  relationship  with  Christ  once  formed 
aright,  we  have  taken  the  means  of  satisfaction 
which  will  never  play  us  false.  He  is  the  inex- 
haustible  spring  of  life.  And  it  is  not  a  useless 
matter  to  remind  ourselves  of  that,  because  there  is 
so  much  energy  wasted — even  by  those  who  claim 
to  have  surrendered  to  the  Christ — on  what  can 
only  be  called  experiments  in  satisfying  the  soul. 
We  forsake  too  often  the  one  pursuit  on  which  we 
ought  to  concentrate — the  pursuit  of  consolidating 
and  establishing  our  attachment  to  the  Christ- 
source  —  and  spend  ourselves  on  a  thousand 
things  which  heighten  the  emotion  and  produce  a 
spurious  sense  of  life,  which  is  after  all  no  life, 
within  us,  as  though  the  supply  from  Christ  were 
not  inexhaustible  and  sufficient,  and  we  needed 
to  have  some  other  springs  in  reserve  when  the 


152     VOICE  OF  CHRISrS  CONSCIOUSNESS 


supply  from  the  Christ-spring  breaks  down.  The 
life  which  flows  into  us  from  Christ  is  sufficient 
for  our  to-day,  and  its  tide  will  be  no  less  high  for 
our  to-morrow  if  we  keep  our  attachment  to  the 
source  unimpaired,  and  through  all  our  days  no 
failure  of  its  streams  can  be.  Christ  is  the  inex- 
haustible spring :  it  is  our  part,  therefore,  to  do 
but  this  one  thing — to  perfect  our  attachment 
thereto.  All  other  efforts  of  ours  are  but  wasted 
strength. 

Christ  the  source  of  a  life  that  is  new — Christ 
the  source  of  a  life  that  is  inexhaustible  the  ages 
long — so  does  His  proclamation  of  Himself  as  the 
living  fountain  set  Him  before  our  eyes.  It  is,  of 
course,  only  saying  in  changed  manner  what 
He  has  said  before.  Life  in  Himself — the  living 
bread — the  living  water — it  all  leads  to  the  same 
conception  of  the  relationship  between  Christ  and 
man,  and  indicates  that  only  in  absolute  union 
between  man  and  Christ  is  the  true  relationship 
found.  It  is  but  playing  the  same  melody  in 
varying  key.  Let  each  lesson  in  its  turn  write  its 
impression  upon  the  mind.    As  the  water  of  life 


LIVING  WATER" 


153 


— new  and  exhaustless — is  He  now  to  be  received. 
In  our  need  of  such  a  full  and  ceaselessly-flowing 
life,  in  our  hope  of  it  (as  vain  apart  from  Him  as 
the  Messianic  hope  of  Israel  apart  from  Him  was 
vain)  He  comes  to  us  and,  if  we  allow  Him  to  do 
so,  will  make  the  spring  to  leap  up  within  our 
hearts  as  He  establishes  Himself  there.  And  thus 
the  soul's  long  drought  passes ;  and  they  who 
have  sought  for  water  out  of  the  rock,  and  some- 
times sought  it  for  nought,  find  the  new  age  begun 
as  the  streams  flow  full ;  and  the  Christ  leads 
them  unto  the  living  fountains  of  water  which  in 
Himself  are  rising,  and  so  wipes  away  all  tears 
from  their  eyes. 


XIII. 


THE  VOICE  OF  CHRIST'S  CONSCIOUS- 
NESS:  "THE  LIGHT  OF  THE  WORLD." 


E  may  pass  over  the  paragraph  with  which 


recording  the  story  of  the  woman  taken  in  her 
sin — partly  because  it  is  doubtful  whether  the 
paragraph  ought  to  stand  there,  since  most  of  the 
manuscripts  of  the  Gospel  omit  it,  and  partly 
because  it  in  any  case  marks  only  a  parenthesis 
in  the  steady  revelation  of  Himself  as  life-giver 
which  Christ  was  carrying  on.  Of  course  to  say 
that  the  legitimacy  of  the  paragraph  is  open  to 
question  is  not  by  any  means  to  say  that  the 
incident  it  records  did  not  happen,  but  only  that 
it  is  uncertain  whether  in  this  particular  Gospel 
or  at  this  particular  place   of  the  Gospel  the 


John  viii.,  ix. 


the  eighth  chapter  begins — the  paragraph 


**THE  LIGHT  OF  THE  WORLD'*  155 


record  should  find  a  home.  Be  it  as  it  may,  the 
thing  which  calls  for  notice,  now  that  we  have 
heard  Christ  declare  Himself  as  the  Creator  of 
life,  the  Bread  of  life,  and  the  Water  of  life,  is 
His  declaration  of  Himself  as  the  Light  of  life, 
the  declaration  which  sounds  out  to  us  from  the 
twelfth  verse  of  the  eighth  chapter.  Again  there- 
fore Jesus  spake  unto  them,  saying,  I  am  the  light 
of  the  world  :  he  that  followeth  me  shall  not  walk 
in  the  darkness,  but  shall  have  the  light  of  life." 

Just  as  Christ's  previous  announcement  that  they 
who  thirsted  should  come  unto  Him  and  drink 
found  its  origin,  as  we  saw,  in  one  of  the  rites 
of  the  feast  of  Tabernacles — the  rite  of  bringing 
water  from  the  pool  of  Siloam  and  pouring  it  forth 
within  the  Temple  bounds — so  is  it  with  this 
announcement  that  in  Him  the  true  and  lasting 
light  is  kindled.  Lamps  were  set  round  about 
the  Temple  during  the  time  of  the  feast,  in 
commemoration  of  the  Pillar  of  Fire  which  had 
through  the  desert  been  the  people's  guide.  And 
as  Christ  had  claimed  that  in  Him  the  symbol  of 
the  water  had  its  antitype,  its  fulfilment,  so  He 


156    VOICE  OF  CHRISrS  CONSCIOUSNESS 


claims  now  that  these  symbolic  lamps,  while  they 
reminded  the  onlookers  of  the  light  by  which  their 
wandering  fathers  had  walked,  had  their  symbolism 
perfectly  realised  in  the  light  which  He,  the  Christ, 
would  shed  abroad.  As  He  was  the  world's  living 
and  lasting  water,  so  was  He  the  world's  living  and 
everlasting  light. 

Christ  gives  life,  then,  as  light  gives  guidance 
— simply  by  shining  Himself,  if  one  may  say  so, 
into  the  natures  of  men.  Precisely  the  same  idea 
in  substance,  let  it  be  observed,  as  Christ  has 
enunciated  in  other  methods  before.  We  have 
heard  Him  speak  of  Himself  as  the  Creator  of  life 
in  man :  man,  therefore,  has  simply  to  open  him- 
self to  and  to  receive  the  Christ  and  the  creative 
impulse  with  Him.  We  have  heard  Him  speak 
of  Himself  as  the  bread  of  life :  man,  therefore, 
has  simply  to  receive  Him  as  the  physical  nature 
receives  its  sustaining  food.  We  have  heard  Him 
speak  of  Himself  as  the  water  of  life  :  man,  there- 
fore, has  simply  to  receive  Him  and  to  let  the 
spring  of  life  that  is  in  Him  leap  up  within. 
Now  He  is  the  light  of  life :  man,  therefore,  has 


**THE  LIGHT  OF  THE  WORLD''  157 


simply  to  receive  Him  as  the  world  receives  and 
is  bathed  in  the  light  of  day.  Precisely  the  same 
idea — and  yet,  as  is  important  to  note,  with  a 
new  element  added  to  its  content.  For  you 
cannot  speak  of  light  without  at  once  suggesting 
the  darkness  which  is  in  contrast  with  light ;  and 
in  calling  Himself  the  light  of  the  world  Christ 
addresses  Himself  directly  to  the  problem  of  the 
world's  sin,  and  declares  that  even  for  that  His 
ministries  are  enough.  The  life-giver — the  bread 
of  the  soul — the  living  water — yes,  that  is  all 
very  well,  but  what  about  this  question  of  corrupt 
hearts  and  tainted  wills  and  natures  warped  from 
their  comeliness — this  question  with  which  all 
who  are  going  to  minister  effectually  to  men  must 
deal  ?  And  Christ  makes  His  answer,  "  It  has 
none  of  it  any  terror  for  me.  Dark  as  it  all  is,  I 
am  the  light  which  can  shine  it  all  away."  What 
makes  all  other  ministries  powerless,  or  to  a  great 
extent  powerless,  has  no  effect  upon  the  ministry 
of  Christ :  it  is  not  with  Him,  as  with  many,  that 
under  favourable  conditions,  with  man  va  his 
normal  and  healthy  state,  He  can  minister  to 
man,  but  finds  His  working  checked  when  man 


158    VOICE  OF  CHRIST'S  CONSCIOUSNESS 


has  swerved  out  of  the  proper  line  of  develop- 
ment: this  life  which  Christ  has  to  give  is  food 
for  the  nature  which  yearns  to  be  fed  with  life, 
and  water  for  the  nature  which  longs  to  have  the 
streams  of  life  welling  up  within  it;  but  it  is  also 
light  for  the  nature  which  feels  itself,  by  reason  of 
its  unworthiness,  wrapped  in  impenetrable  gloom. 
Let  the  conditions  of  man's  inner  life  be  abnormal 
and  crossed  and  muddled  as  they  may,  thrown 
into  such  utter  confusion  that  darkness  black  as 
night  is  the  phrase  which  most  accurately  describes 
their  state,  Christ's  claim  for  Himself  is,  "  Only  let 
me  come  near,  and  the  thick  banks  of  darkness 
piled  up  and  up  within  that  heart  must  be  dis- 
sipated as  I  come."  Others  can  only  work  in 
natures  already  lit  up :  Christ  is  Himself  the 
light. 

For  the  purpose  which  John  had  pre-eminently 
in  view  in  the  writing  of  his  Gospel,  it  is  of  value 
to  record  this  claim  which  Christ  made  on  His 
own  behalf — this  claim  of  entire  competence  to 
deal  with  the  conditions  of  life  at  their  worst. 
John  writes  to  show  that  Jesus  is  indeed  the 


''THE  LIGHT  OF  THE  WORLD'*  159 


Christ,  the  Son  of  God.  Well,  how  does  this 
Jesus  bear  Himself  with  all  the  darkness  of  the 
world  before  Him  ?  The  question  is  crucial.  He 
offers  great  gifts,  holds  up  supreme  ideals,  catches 
at  the  aspirations  and  yearnings  of  human  hearts 
and  says  that  He  can  fasten  them  to  that  which 
will  make  them  abidingly  content — yes,  but  sin, 
this  great  shadow  which  enfolds  man,  this  pall  of 
night  which  appears  as  if  it  could  never  lift  again, 
what  has  He  to  say  to  that?  At  the  supreme 
moment,  does  His  promise  fail.  His  ministry 
draw  back  with  nothing  more  that  it  can  do? 
Has  He  all  the  secrets  except  the  one  last  secret 
without  which  all  other  secrets  might  as  well  be 
left  untold  ?  Nay.  "  I  am  the  light  of  the  world  !  " 
His  claim  for  Himself  is  that  the  worst  darkness 
is  nothing  to  Him,  that  the  sin  which  veils  human 
life  with  its  heavy  shadows  daunts  Him  not,  that 
at  His  coming  the  darkness  flees.  Look  at  the 
great  Figure — John  seems  to  call — listen  to  the 
great  claim  !  "  Sufficient  to  cope  even  with  the 
problem  of  sin  itself" — that  is  its  sum.  No  one 
would  be  fool  enough  to  make  such  a  claim 
untruly;  and  if  by  this  Jesus  the  claim  can  be 


i6o    VOICE  OF  CHRIST'S  CONSCIOUSNESS 


truly  made,  verily  He  must  be  the  Son  of  the 
living  God. 

In  regard  to  our  relationship  with  Christ,  this 
metaphor  has  the  same  message  and  suggestion 
as  all  the  rest — that  the  actual  mingling  of  the 
Christ  with  ourselves,  the  actual  substitution  of 
His  life  for  our  own,  is  the  indispensable  condition 
for  the  establishment  of  a  relationship  such  as  He 
would  have.  If  Christ  be  the  light  which  scatters 
the  soul's  darkness,  we  have  but  to  set  ourselves 
beneath  His  shining  and  to  let  Him  shine,  would 
we  be  touched  with  light.  Christ's  shining  upon 
us  the  simple  remedy  for  our  darkness — the  im- 
pinging of  Christ's  nature  and  Christ's  life  upon 
ours  the  simple  remedy  for  our  sin — thus  is  the 
secret  to  be  read.  ,Only  to  receive  Him  is  the 
gospel's  changeless  call.  Not  to  make  anything, 
not  to  do  anything — only  to  let  Him  shine  !  The 
sin  in  us  is  to  be  destroyed,  not  by  direct  conflict 
against  it,  but  by  putting  ourselves  under  the 
personality  of  the  sinless  One.  For  He  is  light, 
so  that  the  very  kindling  of  Him  near  us,  within 
us,  must  make  it  light  near  us  and  within.  How 


*'THE  LIGHT  OF  THE  WORLD''  i6i 


do  we  cause  darkness  to  give  way  to  light  ?  You 
go  into  your  darkened  room,  and  you  do  not  do 
anything  to  the  darkness :  you  do  not  (the  very 
idea  is  grotesque)  take  it  out  by  handfuls  or  expel 
it  by  any  mechanical  pressure.  You  do  but 
kindle  the  flame,  and  the  darkness  is  gone.  This 
darkness  of  sin  within  us,  this  black  fog  of  cor- 
ruption which  so  pervades  our  souls — take  not  so 
much  thought  to  drive  it  out,  but  take  more 
thought  to  let  the  Christ-light  in.  The  gloom 
and  fog  will  go.  Our  whole  spiritual  exercise 
should  be  this — to  keep  the  Christ-nature  and  the 
Christ  -  life  near  us,  and  to  keep  ourselves  near 
to  the  Christ-nature  and  the  Christ-life.  What 
transformation  our  natures  need  will  be  accom- 
plished then,  because  where  Christ  is,  un-Christli- 
ness  cannot  be.  What  communion  hath  light 
with  darkness  ?  Only  let  enough  light  in — only 
let  the  whole  nature,  not  a  part  of  it,  be  turned, 
and  only  let  it  be  always,  not  intermittently, 
turned,  to  the  Christ-sun — and  the  darkness  must 
be  past.  We  have  not  to  drive  out  the  souFs 
darkness.    We  have  but  to  let  Christ  shine  in. 

To  clear  sin  out  of  us,  we  have  but  to  admit  the 
II 


i62     VOICE  OF  CHRISrS  CONSCIOUSNESS 


Christ.  Our  care  should  be  fixed,  not  on  the 
door  by  which  we  hope  to  thrust  sin  forth,  but  on 
the  door  by  which  we  mean  to  let  Christ  in.  For 
if  He  come,  sin  must  slink  out  ashamed.  The 
positive  kindling  of  the  Christ-life  in  us  is  the 
thing  for  which  we  must  seek,  for  so  we  shall 
walk  in  darkness  no  more. 

Yet  the  ninth  chapter  (which,  closely  related  as 
it  is  with  the  main  idea  of  the  eighth,  needs  to  be 
permitted  to  make  its  impression  at  once)  supplies 
us  with  a  counterbalancing  thought.  In  the  ninth 
chapter  John  passes  on  —  clearly  with  perfect 
comprehension  of  the  connecting  links,  and  with 
deliberate  intention  that  his  readers  shall  com- 
prehend them  also — from  Christ^s  declaration  of 
Himself  as  the  light  of  the  world  to  a  miracle  of 
Christ's  which  illustrates  the  spiritual  truth  in  the 
physical  sphere.  Christ  brings  light  to  man  in 
the  spiritual  sense :  here  He  brings  light  to  man 
in  the  physical  sense,  and  makes  the  blind  to  see. 
And  that  Christ  Himself  wanted  the  physical 
miracle  to  be  taken  as  an  illustration  of  the 
spiritual  ministry  is  evident  from  this — that  in  the 


'*THE  LIGHT  OF  THE  WORLD"  163 


presence  of  this  man  He  echoes  His  own  words 
from  the  previous  chapter,  and  repeats  the  declara- 
tion He  formerly  avowed.  "  When  I  am  in  the 
world,  I  am  the  light  of  the  world."  The  behold- 
ing of  this  man,  to  whom  He  is  going  to  restore 
the  lower  light,  stirs  in  Christ  again  a  vivid  con- 
sciousness of  His  mission  to  bestow  upon  all  men 
the  higher  light;  and  as  He  has  the  power  to 
give  to  this  man  in  his  need  the  illumination 
of  his  darkness,  so  has  He  the  power  to  give 
to  men  and  women  in  the  deeper  darkness  of 
their  inner  life  the  illumination  for  which  they 
wait.  The  miracle  presents  itself  to  John  after  it 
has  been  performed,  just  as  it  presented  itself  to 
Christ  even  while  He  was  performing  it,  as  an 
illustration  in  the  lower  sphere  of  Christ's  ministries 
in  the  higher. 

But  one  of  the  first  things  which  starts  up  and 
forces  itself  into  notice,  as  the  account  of  the 
miracle  is  read,  is  that  Christ  compelled  this 
blind  man,  notwithstanding  his  helplessness,  to 
take  some  part  in  the  work  of  his  own  healing. 
He  had  to  go  to  the  pool  of  Siloam  and  wash ; 
and  it  was  when  he  had  done  this  that  he  "  came 


i64    VOICE  OF  CHRIST'S  CONSCIOUSNESS 


seeing."  Christ  was  the  light  for  him,  and  yet  he 
had  to  bestir  himself  and  make  an  effort  of  his 
own  before  the  shining  of  the  light  was  his. 

To  the  declaration  that  spiritually  Christ  is 
the  light  of  man,  we  need  always  to  add  the 
counterbalancing  declaration,  with  its  warning, 
that  not  for  us  is  the  shining  of  the  light  until 
we  have  done  our  part.  We  came  previously 
upon  practically  the  same  point,  when  we  were 
pondering  Christ's  proclamation  of  Himself  under 
the  other  metaphor  as  the  bread  of  life :  it  was  a 
fair  inference,  we  saw  then,  from  His  use  of  the 
metaphor  that  upon  ourselves  something  of  the 
burden  lay ;  for  bread  does  nothing  for  us  unless 
we  stretch  forth  the  hand  and  seize  it.  It  does 
not  of  itself  feed  our  hunger,  but  must  be  sought 
for  and  grasped.  But  here  we  have  something 
more  than  an  inference — here  is  an  actual  concrete 
instance  of  Christ  making  His  gift  dependent  in 
part  upon  the  effort  of  him  who  was  to  receive. 
We  need  always  to  hold  the  balance  true  between 
the  idea  that  all  for  us  is  in  Christ  and  the  other 
idea  that  a  burden  rests  nevertheless  upon  our 
own  hearts :  when  one  idea  is  exclusively  held, 


''THE  LIGHT  OF  THE  WORLD'*  165 


and  the  balancing  idea  forgotten,  you  get  a  con- 
ception of  the  Christian  life  which  can  in  no  wise 
lead  to  the  highest  results.  In  all  the  darkness 
of  our  bewildered  moral  nature,  in  all  the  shadow 
of  our  sinfulness,  Christ  is  our  light ;  but  He  wants 
us  to  do  some  work  of  preparation  upon  ourselves 
before  the  light  that  is  in  Him  can  shine  in.  All 
is  to  come  from  Him ;  and  still  we  have  some- 
thing to  do  in  making  it  possible  for  all  to  come 
from  Him.  Indeed,  on  this  as  on  all  subjects 
which  go  down  to  the  deeps  of  things,  one  has  to 
give  utterance  to  what  sound  like  partial  contra- 
dictions, but  are  really  only  different  sides  of  the 
same  truth.  Nothing  is  required  of  us  but  faith ; 
and  the  apparent  contradiction  is  that  we  have 
to  work  out  our  own  salvation  with  fear  and 
trembling.  Every  influence  that  can  improve 
and  refine  and  sanctify  our  inner  nature  is  in 
Christ,  and  Christ  alone ;  and  the  apparent  con- 
tradiction is  that  Christ  seems  to  demand  from 
those  who  would  be  His  disciples  so  much  which 
discipleship  might  perhaps  produce,  but  which 
can  hardly  be  present  before  discipleship  begins. 
The  truth  amid  the  seeming  contradictions  is  of 


i66    VOICE  OF  CHRISrS  CONSCIOUSNESS 


course  this — that  before  Christ's  grace  can  come 
forth  upon  us,  there  must  be  self-preparation,  self- 
discipline,  a  clearing  of  the  inner  life  from  pre- 
judice and  obstinacy  and  bondage  to  habit,  a 
whole  programme  of  preliminary  things  whereby 
the  soul  may  be  got  ready  for  Christ  to  come  in. 
Not  that  the  preliminaries  have  any  particular 
positive  virtue  in  themselves :  the  positive  grace 
is  to  come  from  Christ ;  but  the  way  is  to  be 
prepared  for  its  coming  by  the  self-discipline  we 
set  ourselves  to  go  through.  The  man  had  to 
go  to  the  pool  of  Siloam  and  wash  before  he 
could  see,  although  the  light  of  the  world  stood 
beside  him ;  and  the  fact  is  symbolic  of  the 
preparation  required  of  us  would  we  have  the 
Christ  shine  in.  He  is  the  light  of  the  world, 
indeed — but  the  phrase  must  not  lull  us  into 
spiritual  sloth,  nor  make  us  fancy  that  on  un- 
disciplined natures  the  light  will  shed  its  rays. 
Before  you  can  appreciate  the  light-giving  power 
of  the  sun,  you  must  at  least  open  the  eyes  which 
have  been  closed :  before  you  can  appreciate  the 
light-giving  power  of  the  Christ,  you  must  at 
least  open  the  eyes  of  the  inner  nature;  and  it  is 


''THE  LIGHT  OF  THE  WORLD"  167 


not  such  an  easy  thing  there.  For  co-operation 
with  Himself  does  Christ  call,  if  He  is  to  perform 
His  miracles;  and  a  burden  of  responsibility 
rests  upon  us  still,  although  all  grace  is  in 
Him. 

Returning  for  a  space  to  the  eighth  chapter, 
which  for  a  while  we  left,  it  is  noteworthy  how, 
when  Christ's  declaration  that  in  Him  the 
perfect  light  was  shining  roused  into  fiercer 
hostility  the  irritated  Pharisees  who  lay  in  wait 
to  catch  Him  in  His  words,  Christ's  tone  rose 
higher,  and  how  He  reiterated,  in  more  pro- 
nounced form  than  perhaps  at  any  other  time. 
His  claim  to  closest  intimacy  and  most  entire 
harmony  with  His  God.  Or,  if  elsewhere  asser- 
tions of  equal  force  are  to  be  found,  it  is  at  any 
rate  here  that  they  are  most  often  repeated  and 
most  strenuously  insisted  upon  and  most  daringly 
thrust  upon  hearers  unwilling  to  receive  them. 
Christ  seems  to  realise  how  bitterly  hostile  these 
men  round  Him  are,  and  to  accept  their  hostility 
as  a  necessary  element  in  the  situation — to  think 
within  Himself,  "  If  you  will  be  opponents,  at 


i68    VOICE  OF  CHRISrS  CONSCIOUSNESS 


least  you  shall  have  full  opportunity  of  show- 
ing how  irreconcilable  you  are " ;  and  so  He 
presses  home  that  claim  of  His  which  they  could 
not  away  with,  His  claim  to  be  one  with  God. 
Even  when  some  of  the  Jews  believed  on  Him 
after  a  fashion,  as  the  thirtieth  verse  informs  us, 
Christ  returns  to  the  same  point,  as  if  determined 
that  it  shall  not  be  through  any  imperfect  under- 
standing of  what  He  demands  for  Himself  that 
their  belief  is  rendered ;  and  we  see,  as  the 
chapter  goes  on,  that  under  that  insistence  of 
Christ's  even  those  who  had  given  Him  some  sort 
of  assent  are  roused  into  opposition  again.  All 
through,  "  the  Father "  or  "  my  Father "  is  the 
word :  God  was  in  Him  and  He  in  God :  He 
knows  God's  secrets,  reads  God's  mind  :  He  is  not 
of  this  world  :  He  is  "  the  Son."  Christ's  conten- 
tion was  ever  this — that  He  did  not  have,  as 
others  had,  to  learn  about  God,  to  struggle  up 
to  Him,  to  add  item  after  item  to  His  stock 
of  knowledge  of  God,  to  grow  into  a  perfect 
relationship  with  Him :  with  God  He  was 
from  the  beginning  entirely  at  home.  He 
had    come    straight    out   from    the   bosom  of 


*^THE  LIGHT  OF  THE  WORLD"  169 


the  Father  whereon  He  had  rested :  yea, 
although  the  world  saw  Him  as  one  of  its 
own  citizens,  He  was  really  resting  upon  the 
bosom  of  the  Father  still.  He  was  part  of 
God. 

We  may  say,  in  reference  to  John^s  record  of 
this  claim  of  Christ's  and  of  Christ's  persistence 
in  affirming  and  re-affirming  it — as  we  said  in 
reference  to  the  record  of  Christ's  announcement 
that  He  was  the  world's  perfect  light — that  for 
the  evangelist's  main  purpose  it  was  a  thing  of 
value  thus  to  set  down  the  tale  of  the  uncompro- 
mising Christ — the  Christ  who  was  so  sure  of 
Himself.  The  lowest  type  of  character  is  always 
apt  to  be  sure  of  itself,  to  think  that  it  has  all 
that  can  be  possessed  and  is  all  that  it  can  be — 
because  it  is  ignorant  of  how  much  there  is  above 
it :  the  highest  character  of  all  would  of  course 
be  sure  of  itself — because  the  highest  must  know 
that  there  is  above  it  nothing  higher  still :  it  is 
the  intermediate  types — those  to  which  the  most 
of  us  belong,  those  who  know  themselves  to  be 
struggling  out  of  a  lowness  beneath  them  into  a 
greatness  above  them — whose  accents  will  ever 


I70    VOICE  OF  CHRIST'S  CONSCIOUSNESS 


be  faltering  and  who  will  advance  no  claims  on 
their  own  behalf.  An  assertion  that  no  effort 
after  anything  higher  remains  to  be  gone  through 
— it  might  be  made  by  the  low  man,  who  has 
never  awakened  to  the  reality  of  things,  and  it 
might  be  made  by  divineness  itself.  Which  was 
Christ  ?  This  is  the  point  to  be  dealt  with — so 
John's  recording  of  Christ's  calm,  large  claim 
sets  it  before  us — was  this  Christ  so  low  that  He 
was  unaware  how  far  He  was  from  God,  and  in 
ignorance  made  His  claim,  or  was  He  so  high,  so 
divine,  that  it  was  with  perfect  justice  He  could 
make  it  ?  His  assertion  about  Himself  was  not 
one  which  the  average  good  man  could  make. 
One  far  enough  below  the  average  good  man  to 
make  it,  or  one  far  enough  above  the  average 
good  man  to  make  it — which  was  Christ  ?  And 
because  any  claimant  asserting  unjustly  a  moral 
and  spiritual  oneness  with  God  would  be  found 
out  ere  long,  and  because  Christ  was  never  found 
to  have  falsely  claimed — because  all  that  He  is 
supports  the  claim  He  made — therefore  does  He 
stand  before  us  as  one  with  the  Father  in  very 
deed  and  truth.    Of  this  chapter — leading  as  it 


^'THE  LIGHT  OF  THE  WORLD'  171 


does  through  the  great  announcement  that  the 
world's  light  was  shining  up  to  the  great  and  re- 
emphasised  declarations  that  God  and  Christ  were 
one — of  this  chapter,  as  of  the  rest  of  his  Gospel, 
John  could  say  that  these  things  "  are  written 
that  ye  may  believe  that  Jesus  is  the  Christ,  the 
Son  of  God/'  The  greatness  of  Christ's  self- 
assertion  compels  us  to  put  Him  either  down  to 
the  lowest  or  on  the  very  throne  of  God.  Who 
can  hesitate  as  to  where  His  place  shall  be  ? 


XIV. 


THE  VOICE  OF  CHRISTS  CONSCIOUS- 
NESS:  '*THE  GOOD  SHEPHERD." 


HIS  chapter  brings  us  to  the  last  figure,  the 


A  final  metaphor,  by  which  Christ  seeks  to 
make  clear  the  relationship  which  is  to  subsist 
between  Him  and  His  own.  As  far  back  as  the 
fifth  chapter,  it  will  be  remembered,  Christ  made 
the  definite  statement  concerning  Himself  and 
His  ministry,  that  "  as  the  Father  hath  life  in 
himself,  even  so  gave  he  to  the  Son  also  to  have 
life  in  himself" — indicating  thereby  that  He,  the 
Christ,  comes  in  order  to  create  actual  new  life 
out  of  Himself  in  the  hearts  of  men.  Men  are 
not  simply  to  imitate  Him,  not  simply  to  believe 
in  Him — in  any  shallow  interpretation  of  the 
word  "  believe  " — but  to  be  actually  pervaded  by 


John  x.  i-i8. 


'*THE  GOOD  SHEPHERD"  173 


the  life  He  possesses.  And  we  have  followed  the 
subsequent  declarations,  in  which  Christ  repeated 
and  expounded  the  same  idea  under  various  forms, 
expressed  in  differing  fashion  the  fundamental 
thought  that  men  are  in  truth  to  receive  Him  into 
themselves  and  to  be  themselves  lost  in  Him. 
For  a  last  method  of  impressing  His  persistent 
idea,  Christ  employs  the  figure  of  the  shepherd 
and  his  flock,  wishing  His  hearers  to  understand 
that  as  the  sheep  depend  absolutely  upon  him 
who  tends  them  for  all  they  do  and  for  all  they 
get,  finding  all  in  him  who  tends  them,  so  the 
followers  of  Christ  stand  to  Him  in  a  relation  of 
utter  dependence,  and  in  Him  and  from  Him 
are  to  find  their  all.  To  the  Eastern  mind  the 
metaphor  would  appeal  more  powerfully  even 
than  to  us,  since  the  shepherd  of  Eastern  lands 
identifies  himself  most  entirely  with  the  sheep 
under  his  care,  and  his  interest  in  them  suffers 
nothing  to  diminish  it,  and  he  makes  their  safety 
to  be  inseparably  linked  with  his  own. 

Christ  the  Shepherd — we  the  sheep  of  His 
flock.    It  is  a  tender  relationship,  sweet,  idyllic. 


174    VOICE  OF  CHRISrS  CONSCIOUSNESS 


beautiful ;  and  I  think  that  after  the  other  figures 
under  which  Christ  had  described  His  relation  to 
His  people  and  theirs  to  Him  He  was  glad  to 
use  this  new  figure,  which  had  in  it  a  winsome 
graciousness  absent  from  the  rest.  The  Creator 
of  life  in  us,  the  Bread  which  is  transformed 
into  life  in  us,  the  Water  which  springs  up  as 
inexhaustible  life  in  the  soul,  the  Light  of  life 
which  diffuses  itself  through  us — He  is  all  these 
things,  and  must  be  so  apprehended ;  but  these 
conceptions  of  Him  are  so  great,  with  something 
of  austerity  in  them  it  may  be,  making  the 
Christly  relation  seem  to  have  in  it  a  touch  of 
the  severe.  And  so  Christ  comes  down  to  us — 
"  here  is  the  same  idea  of  absolute  dependence  on 
me  in  a  sweeter  form :  I  am  the  Good  Shepherd. 
No  austerity,  but  all  tenderness,  is  in  that." 
Having  hung  these  other  great  ideas  before  our 
vision,  like  suns  that  dazzle  us  with  their  rays  if 
we  look  upon  them  too  long,  Christ  swings  this 
quiet  star  into  its  place  in  the  sky  to  shed  its 
softer  light.  All  those  great  things  He  is  to  us 
and  will  always  be  to  us ;  but  also  He  is  the  Good 
Shepherd.    And  yet,  if  we  cast  another  glance 


**THE  GOOD  SHEPHERD"  175 

upon  it,  we  see  immediately  that,  in  the  using 
of  this  metaphor,  Christ  gives  up  nothing  of  His 
claim  to  be  the  one  authoritative  source  of  all  to 
us.  A  shepherd — he  is  kind  and  patient  and 
gentle,  if  he  be  a  shepherd  worthy  the  name ; 
but  if  he  be  a  shepherd  worthy  the  name,  he  is 
also  one  of  the  most  absolute  rulers  the  world 
contains.  The  sheep,  I  suppose,  stands  as  the 
type  of  most  utter  helplessness,  making  blunders 
whenever  there  is  the  slightest  chance  of  making 
them,  running  into  danger  as  if  it  loved  it,  about 
the  most  pitifully  incapable  thing  on  God's  earth. 
The  shepherd,  though  he  rule  kindly,  must 
preserve  the  strictness  of  his  rule.  And  in 
Christ's  view  we  are  the  sheep  who  do  not  know 
their  way  and  have  no  life  except  what  He, 
the  Shepherd,  makes  for  them.  He  is  the  Good 
Shepherd ;  and  that  means  that  He  will  be 
running  over  with  graciousness,  compassionate 
with  the  wounded  and  the  tired  ones ;  but  if  He 
is  the  Shepherd,  we  are  the  sheep,  and  that  means 
that  to  take  all  from  Him  is  the  only  thing  we 
can  safely  do.  Round  again  are  we  brought  to 
the  Christ's  fundamental   idea — that  He  must 


176    VOICE  OF  CHRISTS  CONSCIOUSNESS 


make  life  for  us  and  in  us.  So  when  Christ 
speaks  of  Himself  as  the  Shepherd  of  the  sheep, 
He  wants  us  to  combine  in  our  thought  about 
Him  these  two  things — His  absolute,  authoritative 
superiority,  and  His  sweet,  familiar,  condescending 
care.  We  have  no  complete  understanding  of 
what  Christ  would  be  to  us  and  of  what  we 
should  be  to  Him  until  in  our  conception  of  the 
relationship  the  two  ideas  are  inseparably  linked. 
When  the  greatness  of  the  ministry  Christ  wants 
to  work  in  us  makes  us  afraid,  we  may  remind 
ourselves  that  He  does  not  merely  stand  above, 
beyond  us,  flinging  down,  as  it  were.  His  great 
ideas.  His  great  suggestions.  His  great  offers, 
leaving  us  to  get  out  of  Him  what  we  can,  but 
is  the  Shepherd  who  compasses  His  flock  about 
with  active  benevolence  and  care.  When,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  wonder  of  His  tenderness  warms 
and  gladdens  us,  we  are  to  remember  still  that  all 
those  great  ideas  and  great  suggestions  and  great 
offers  of  His  keep  their  authority  unimpaired ; 
and,  let  the  Shepherd  be  kind  as  He  will,  the 
sheep  on  their  side  must  at  least  obey.  Christ's 
metaphor,  when  He  speaks  of  Himself  as  the 


<<THE  GOOD  SHEPHERD''  177 


leader  of  the  flock,  suggests  alike  and  equally  His 
undiminished  authority  over  us  as  the  source  ot 
all  our  life,  and  His  gracious,  familiar  condescen- 
sion in  bringing  life  to  those  who  in  themselves 
have  none.  And  we  must  allow  both  suggestions 
to  have  their  weight  if  we  would  fully  apprehend 
the  figure  Christ  employs. 

It  may  be  said  that  Christ's  divine  greatness 
shows  itself  in  this — that  He  can  bear  to  stoop, 
that  He  can  use  language  like  this,  so  gentle  as 
it  is,  so  unduly  mild  as  it  would  be  in  any  other 
who  should  aspire  to  be  a  leader  of  men,  and  yet 
keep  all  His  majesty.  Your  ordinary  man  who 
wants  to  hold  a  position  of  authority  and  leader- 
ship is  everlastingly  afraid  lest  he  should  unbend 
too  far :  he  has  to  keep  his  distance  and  to  keep 
others  at  theirs :  he  must  allow  no  soft  accents 
to  slide  into  his  speech :  he  compromises  himself 
so  far  as  he  makes  familiar  relations  possible 
between  himself  and  those  whom  he  seeks  to  lead. 
But  this  Christ  has  so  much  greatness  in  reserve 
that,  let  Him  stoop  as  He  may,  men  still  feel 

that  His  home  is  in  heaven.    Somehow  all  the 
12 


178    VOICE  OF  CHRIST'S  CONSCIOUSNESS 


tenderness  of  His  language  and  the  grace  of  His 
attitude  to  men  does  but  suggest  and  emphasise 
the  measureless  divineness  behind  it  all,  which 
never  can  be  veiled.  Truly  this  man,  who  could 
thus  make  Himself  familiar  to  men  as  the 
Shepherd  whose  sheep  they  were,  and  could  yet 
without  any  incongruity  claim  an  absolute  rule — 
truly  this  was  the  Son  of  God ! 

The  figure  suggests  the  constancy  of  man's 
dependence  upon  Christ,  its  persistence,  its 
permanence.  The  sheep  are  never  educated  to  a 
point  at  which  they  can  do  without  the  sheperd's 
care.  Our  attachment  to  Christ  is  not  simply 
a  new  beginning  for  us,  a  means  by  which  we 
obtain  a  fresh  start.  As  dependent  as  we  are 
to-day,  so  dependent  must  we  always  remain :  in 
this  matter  of  the  true  life  there  is  no  strengthen- 
ing of  faculty  which  will  at  last  enable  us  to  do 
without  shepherding  and  accomplish  everything 
for  ourselves :  Christ  does  not  take  us  in  charge 
in  order  that  He  may  train  us  to  stand  alone. 
There  are  certain  directions  in  which  we  are  not 
to  look  for  progress :  the  only  progress  for  which 


*'THE  GOOD  SHEPHERD''  179 

we  are  to  look  is  progress  in  the  power  of  obtain- 
ing more  from  Christ,  in  letting  His  shepherding 
of  us  have  more  complete  effect.  Christ  is  not 
the  schoolmaster  in  matters  of  the  spiritual  life, 
keeping  us  under  His  hands  for  a  while,  and  then 
sending  us  forth  with  our  education  finished  to 
act  out  the  principles  He  has  instilled.  He  is 
the  Shepherd  whose  v/ork  of  care  is  never  done. 
To  enter,  not  upon  independence,  but  upon  a 
completer  and  more  continuous  dependence,  is  the 
only  progress  that  has  worth.  The  perfected  life 
is  not  the  life  grown  so  strong  that  it  needs  no 
shelter  any  more,  but  the  life  which  never  quits 
the  Shepherd's  fold. 

The  metaphor  offers  also  a  suggestion,  which 
for  every  soul  has  sweetness,  as  to  the  separate, 
individual  character  of  Christ's  ministries.  "  He 
calleth  his  own  sheep  by  name '' — as  the  Eastern 
shepherd  does  know  his  sheep,  distinguishing 
them  every  one,  remembering  the  particular 
characteristics  and  necessities  of  each.  So  does 
Christ  know  His  sheep  separately,  as  it  were  by 
name.    The  Creator  of  life,  the  Bread  of  life,  the 


i8o    VOICE  OF  CHRISrS  CONSCIOUSNESS 


Water  of  life,  the  Light  of  life — yes,  but  there  is 
something  impersonal  about  all  these  things :  I 
may  try  to  know  something  about  them,  but  they 
will  not  know  anything  about  me.  Then  take 
the  final  figure.  The  Shepherd  knows.  Christ 
is  all  these  things,  but  He  sets  them  before  us 
with  remembrance  of  and  regard  for  the  particular 
elements  of  your  life  and  mine  which  belong  to 
us  alone.  A  Christ  who  can  only  work  on  men 
and  save  men  in  one  way,  and  yet  a  Christ  who 
works  on  and  saves  each  man  in  the  way  adapted 
to  his  own  special  need — so  does  the  sweet 
contradiction  run !  And  let  me  be  what  I  may, 
Christ,  wanting  to  give  Himself  to  me,  to  shep- 
herd me,  will  make  His  approach  to  me  in  a 
way  that  I  shall  understand ;  and  He  will  take 
this  sheep  of  His  in  His  arms  in  a  different 
fashion  from  that  other,  and  His  voice  to  each 
one  will  be  the  voice  to  which  each  one  will  most 
readily  respond.  By  many  varieties  of  ministry  will 
this  Shepherd  bring  all  His  sheep  at  last  to  receive 
His  one  great  ministry  of  eternal  life. 

So,  not  forgetting  the  other  methods  in  which 


*'THE  GOOD  SHEPHERD"  i8i 


Christ  had  declared  Himself,  did  John  wish  His 
readers  to  add  to  them  this  last  and  tenderest 
declaration,  that  they  might  be  the  more  surely 
won.  As  they  heard  Him  calling  Himself  the 
Good  Shepherd,  they  were  to  accept  Him  so — 
making  in  answer  to  His  words  their  own  psalm 
of  confidence  and  praise,  testifying  that  the  Lord 
was  their  Shepherd  indeed,  and  that  therefore 
they  could  not  want. 


XV. 


CHRIST  SEEN  UNDER  THE  SHADOW 
OF  DEATH. 

John  xi,,  xii, 

T  N  order  to  preserve  unity  of  impression,  our 
study  has  to  abstract  itself  from  many  of 
the  details  contained  in  the  subsequent  chapters 
of  John's  Gospel,  and  to  concentrate  upon  the 
spirit  behind  the  recorded  deeds  and  utterances 
of  Christ  rather  than  upon  the  deeds  and  utter- 
ances themselves.  John  lingers  lovingly  over 
much  whereon  we,  lest  the  general  effect  be 
blurred  by  prominence  of  particulars,  must  not 
linger  long.  Full  as  the  remaining  chapters  are 
of  much  which  will  ever  be  most  precious  to  the 
Christian  mind  and  heart,  for  our  present  purpose 
• — which  is  to  gather  the  one  impression  whereto 

every    detail    is    subordinate  —  they    must  be 
182 


CHRIST  UNDER  SHADOW  OF  DEATH  183 

surveyed  with  swift,  rather  than  with  slow-moving, 
eyes. 

The  end  of  the  tenth  chapter  marks  a  clear 
break  in  John's  narrative;  and  he  resumes  now 
the  method  of  writing  which  after  the  fourth 
chapter  he  laid  down.  Let  us  recall  for  an 
instant  what  the  run  of  the  story  has  been — 
always,  of  course,  bearing  in  mind  that  John's 
main  object  in  compiling  his  Gospel  has  been  to 
build  up  a  cumulative  witness  that  this  Jesus  is  in 
truth  the  Son  of  God.  John  began  by  recounting 
various  incidents  about  Christ — the  calling  of  the 
first  disciples,  the  miracle  at  Cana  of  Galilee,  the 
conversation  with  Nicodemus,  and  others — each 
incident  in  its  turn  doing  a  little  more  to  separate 
Christ  from  the  family  of  mere  men,  and  bringing 
into  bolder  relief  something  in  Him  for  which 
ordinary  classifications  provided  no  place.  After 
the  fourth  chapter,  John  did  not  so  much  speak 
about  Christ  as  allow  Christ  to  speak  for  Himself: 
the  marvellous  consciousness  of  Christ,  His  own 
inner  life,  His  own  thought  and  feeling,  have  been 
expressing  themselves  from   the  time  the  fifth 


i84  CHRIST  SEEN  UNDER 


chapter  commenced  until  now  ;  and  it  has  not  been 
John  pointing  us  to  the  divineness  Christ  mani- 
fested, but  the  divineness  in  Christ  coming  forth 
to  draw  our  attention  upon  itself.  In  all  these 
discourses  of  His  about  life  and  bread  and  light 
and  water  and  shepherding,  there  has  been  the 
implied  question,  "  What  save  divineness  could 
utter  itself  like  this  ? "  Now  John  begins  to 
speak  about  Christ  once  more  ;  and  it  is  about 
what  a  human  estimate  would  term  the  sad 
ending  of  His  life  that  John  is  preparing  to 
speak ;  and  it  is  to  the  account  of  the  last  scenes 
that  these  chapters — the  eleventh  and  twelfth — 
are  designed  to  lead  up.  "  You  said  at  the  be- 
ginning," John's  readers  might  remark,  "  that  this 
Christ  came  unto  His  own  and  that  His  own 
received  Him  not.  If  He  were  in  truth  of  God, 
He  ought  to  have  been  able  to  avert  the  doom 
brought  upon  Him  by  the  rejection  of  those  that 
were  His  own.  How  are  you  going  to  deal  with 
that  matter?  You  have  been  building  up  an 
impression  of  divine  greatness  in  this  Jesus — will 
it  survive  the  story  of  His  death  ?  "  And  so  John 
faces  the  question.    He  will  recount  the  tale  of 


THE  SHADOW  OF  DEATH  185 


the  last  scenes,  without  fear  that  they  who  read  it 
open-mindedly  will  fancy  the  chief  Figure  in  them 
to  be  suffering  any  loss  of  greatness  as  the  scenes 
pass  before  their  eyes,  knowing  rather  that  those 
last  scenes  themselves  will  but  accentuate  His 
greatness  still  more.  Only  something  must  be 
set  before  the  readers  by  way  of  preliminary,  and 
they  must  understand  that,  although  Christ  per- 
mitted death  to  master  Him,  He  really  held  the 
mastery  over  death,  and  that  He  chose  death 
because  by  death  He  perfected  the  work  He  had 
begun. 

The  eleventh  chapter  shows  Christ  mastering 
death,  in  that  He  called  back  the  dead  Lazarus 
from  the  tomb :  Christ  Himself,  therefore,  need 
not  have  died.  The  twelfth  chapter  shows  Christ 
actually  welcoming  death,  and  giving  the  reason 
for  His  welcoming  of  it — "  And  I,  if  I  be  lifted 
up  from  the  earth,  will  draw  all  men  unto  myself." 
And  we  miss  a  great  deal  of  what  John  intended 
to  convey  unless  we  realise  how  the  contents  of 
these  chapters,  in  addition  to  the  interest  and 
suggestion  they  possess  in  themselves,  fit  thus 
into  the  evangelist's  general  scheme.    He  is  going 


CHRIST  SEEN  UNDER 


to  recount  how  Christ,  divine  though  He  was, 
died  under  the  hands  of  men ;  and  he  prepares 
his  readers  for  the  recounting  of  it  by  showing 
how  in  His  divineness  Christ  was  able  to  master 
death  when  He  would,  and  yet  how  in  His  divine- 
ness He  actually  welcomed  it  as  it  threateningly 
lifted  up  its  head. 

That  there  dwelt  in  Him  the  divineness,  the 
divine  creative  power,  the  divine  life,  against 
which  death  was  powerless.  He  showed  when  He 
came  to  the  cave  where  Lazarus  lay  buried,  and 
called  in  a  voice  which  the  dead  was  constrained 
to  obey,  "  Lazarus,  come  forth."  If  He  could 
do  this,  then  all  questioning  of  His  divineness 
based  on  the  fact  that  He  endured  the  Cross 
becomes  invalid :  it  can  no  more  be  said  that 
death  conquered  Him,  but  only  that  He,  when 
He  might  have  done  otherwise,  submitted  Himself 
to  death ;  and  it  must  be  true,  as  He  had  asserted 
before,  that  no  man  taketh  His  life  from  Him, 
but  that  He  layeth  it  down  of  Himself  because 
this  is  the  commandment  He  has  received  from 
His  Father.    The  conqueror's  power  was  His, 


THE  SHADOW  OF  DEATH  187 


had  He  chosen  to  put  it  forth.  At  once,  there- 
fore (so  the  inference  irresistibly  suggests  itself), 
He  is  carried  away  from  the  level  of  all  others 
who  for  the  sake  of  great  causes  have  died :  He 
was  not,  as  others  have  been,  a  martyr  who,  with 
all  power  and  opportunity  of  resistance  exhausted, 
accepted  a  fate  from  which  there  was  no  escape : 
the  door  was  open  to  Him  up  to  the  end,  had  He 
willed  to  flee.  And  so  He  grows  divinely  great 
indeed.  Can  it  be  thought  that  any,  even  among 
the  noblest  heroes  of  our  race,  would,  if  they 
had  been  possessed  of  such  power  as  this — and  a 
power,  moreover,  by  the  exercise  of  which  they 
could  have  covered  themselves  with  renown  and 
brought  at  any  rate  a  temporary  success  to  their 
cherished  cause — have  held  it  back  ?  To  endure 
what  must  be  endured  is  one  thing :  to  submit  to 
what  may  without  loss  of  honour  in  man's  eyes 
be  avoided  is  quite  another.  But  Christ,  who 
Himself  called  the  dead  to  life,  said  no  word 
to  bid  death  hold  aloof  when  it  drew  near. 
Carry  that  remembrance  with  you,  John  would 
say,  as  you  read  the  story  of  the  Cross,  and^ 
notwithstanding   the   Cross,  you  will   be  sure 


i88  CHRIST  SEEN  UNDER 


that  He  who  died  upon  it  was  the  Son  of 
God. 

But  John  wants  his  readers  to  see,  not  only 
Christ  submitting  to  death  when  He  might  have 
been  free,  but  Christ  actually  welcoming  it,  re- 
joicing in  it  is  not  too  strong  a  word,  taking  it 
as  being  even  a  help  to  His  influence  upon  the 
hearts  of  men.  And  so,  in  the  twelfth  chapter, 
he  tells  how  certain  Greeks,  drawn  to  seek  for 
Christ  by  something  they  had  heard  concerning 
Him,  were  among  the  worshippers  at  the  feast. 
In  one  sense  it  was  an  opportunity:  here  was 
recognition  accorded  to  Christ  from  beyond, 
however  His  own  might  refuse  to  receive  Him : 
these  few  He  had  drawn  by  the  magnetism  of 
whatever  was  strange  and  wonderful  in  Him. 
But  He  would  not  be  carried  away,  would  find 
no  excuse  in  this  success  for  avoiding  what  lay 
before  Him.  "  I,  if  I  be  lifted  up  from  the  earth, 
will  draw  all  men  unto  myself."  He  had  drawn 
but  these  few :  His  Cross  would  draw,  not  a 
few,  but  all.  To  Christ,  death.  His  submission  to 
death,  was  going  to  be,  not  a  curtailing,  but  an 


THE  SHADOW  OF  DEATH  189 


enlargement,  of  His  influence  and  His  work. 
Carry  with  you — so  John  would  say  to  those  who 
read  his  words — carry  with  you,  as  you  ponder 
the  story  of  the  Cross,  the  remembrance  that  this 
Christ  welcomed  it,  rejoiced  in  it,  prophesied  that 
it  would  be  itself  the  very  strength  by  which  He 
would  win  His  way;  and  notwithstanding  the 
Cross,  you  will  be  sure  that  He  who  died  upon 
it  was  the  Son  of  God. 

There  is  a  strengthening  of  the  impression 
made  upon  us  by  Christ's  welcome  of  death 
in  remembering  how  the  fact  that  He  so  wel- 
comed it  chimes  in  and  harmonises  with  all  that 
He  has  previously  said  about  the  relationship 
between  Himself  and  man.  That  through  His 
dying  that  relationship  would  become  a  possible 
experience  for  all  men  through  all  time,  was  an 
idea  at  which  He  had  ali;;eady  hinted,  however 
little  the  hint  may  have  been  understood.  When 
He  spoke  of  Himself  as  the  bread  of  life — 
indicating  thereby  that  absolute  union  between 
Himself  and  man  was  the  conception  of  the 
needed  relationship  He  entertained — thoughts 
of  the  approaching  death  were  moving  in  His 


igo  CHRIST  SEEN  UNDER 


mind  ;  and  it  was  through  sacrifice  that  He  would 
become  the  bread  of  life  to  all.  With  gaze  fixed 
upon  the  decease  He  was  to  accomplish,  He  said 
then,  "  Yea  and  the  bread  which  I  will  give  is  my 
flesh,  for  the  life  of  the  world."  For  the  full 
understanding  of  it,  that  utterance  must  be  linked 
with  the  other  utterance  following  a  little  further 
on.  "  The  bread  which  I  will  give  is  my  flesh," 
— and  yet  it  is  not  long  before  Christ  goes  on, 
"It  is  the  spirit  that  quickeneth ;  the  flesh  pro- 
fiteth  nothing."  Christ  looked  upon  the  giving 
of  His  body  up  to  death  as  the  means  whereby 
His  spirit,  the  quickening  bread  of  our  spirits, 
would  be  set  free  to  offer  itself  far  and  wide  to 
men :  through  His  sacrifice  of  Himself  upon  the 
Cross,  and  through  His  rising  when  the  Cross  had 
done  its  worst  (for  death  and  resurrection  were 
always  inseparably  linked  in  His  thought).  He 
would  become  and  would  remain,  in  the  con- 
tinued, unseen  ministry  which  was  to  begin  when 
the  seen  and  earthly  ministry  closed,  the  bread  of 
life,  not  to  a  few,  but  to  all  the  world.  It  was 
a  figure  within  a  figure,  a  metaphor  within  a 
metaphor.    Christ  was  the  bread  for  souls,  and 


THE  SHADOW  OF  DEATH  191 


the  bread  which  He  would  give  was  His  flesh, 
since  the  giving  of  Himself  to  death' would  mark 
the  beginning  of  that  spirit-ministry  of  His, 
unchanged  and  real  till  now,  which  is  the 
quickening  influence  for  the  life  of  the  world. 
The  Cross  was  standing  in  Christ's  thought,  not 
as  the  end,  but  as  the  beginning  of  things ;  and 
sacrifice  would  but  enlarge  His  power  of  offering 
Himself  to  men  as  their  spiritual  food. 

Here  the  same  fundamental  idea  possesses 
Him ;  and  it  is  as  we  remember  how  Christ 
viewed  the  relationship  between  Himself  and 
man  that  we  become  able  to  enter  in  measure 
into  His  thought  of  what  may — though  with 
recognition  of  the  inadequacy  of  the  phrase — be 
called  the  advantage  of  the  Cross.  He  saw  in  the 
Cross  the  means  which  would  make  Him  for  ever 
accessible  to  man,  able  to  be  the  source  of  life  to 
those  who  would  unite  themselves  with  Him.  "  I, 
if  I  be  lifted  up  from  the  earth,  will  draw  all  men 
unto  myself."  The  utterance  is  itself  profound, 
and  corresponds  with  all  the  other  profound 
things  which  in  this  profoundest  of  all  the  Gospels 
Christ  is  reported  to  have  said  about  Himself, 


192  CHRIST  SEEN  UNDER 


"  Will  draw  all  men  unto  myself — that  is,  will 
so  take  men  who  are  willing  to  surrender  into  the 
deeps  of  My  own  life  and  so  identify  them  with 
Myself  and  Myself  with  them  that  all  their  life 
shall  be  drawn  from  Mine.  Since  He  was  going 
to  do  that — since  He  was  going  to  carry  on  that 
enfolding  of  man's  spirit  within  His  own  through 
all  the  coming  centuries  of  the  world — Christ 
looked  on  to  the  Cross  and  to  the  resurrection 
whereof  the  Cross  was  the  pi-elude  (for  let  it  be 
said  again  that  death  and  rising  always  made 
one  whole  in  Christ's  mind)  as  giving  the  needed 
demonstration  that  in  Him  was  life  and  that  He 
would  ceaselessly  have  life  to  give.  If  He  died 
and  rose  again,  He  would  be  the  living  and  the 
life-giving  Christ  for  evermore :  the  very  Cross 
which  seemed  to  slay  Him  would  itself  supply  the 
proof  that  death  had  no  dominion  over  Him ;  and 
men  might  let  themselves,  till  time  was  done,  be 
drawn  to  the  Christ  who  had  life  in  Himself  and 
life  to  give.  "  I,  if  I  be  lifted  up  from  the  earth, 
will  draw  all  men  unto  myself."  "  That  winning 
of  all  men  into  oneness  with  Me,  which  is  the 
work  the  Father  has  given  Me  to  do,  will  be 


THE  SHADOW  OF  DEATH  193 


performed  year  on  year  unfailingly  when  it  is  by 
One  who  died  and  lives  again  that  men  are 
sought  and  drawn." 

Preacher  of  new  and  most  wondrous  truth, 
exemplar  of  most  perfect  character,  even  supreme 
revelation  of  God  in  a  manner — all  these  Christ 
could  have  been  without  the  Cross.  We  could 
have  looked  back  nineteen,  twenty,  any  number  of 
centuries,  to  recover  all  that,  to  hear  the  echoes 
of  His  words,  to  discern  the  outline  of  what 
He  was.  But  we  could  not  look  back  nineteen, 
twenty  centuries  for  life.  To  be  the  life-giver, 
the  one  who  constantly  draws  men  unto,  into 
Himself — for  that  there  must  be  something  more, 
if  we  may  so  say,  than  a  local  Christ;  and  for 
that  great  ministry  Christ's  Cross  and  His  rising 
set  Him  free.  Since  He  died  and  rose,  the  life 
in  Him  can  draw  me  to-day  and  can  to-day, 
through  that  union,  be  mine.  This  did  Christ 
see  in  the  Cross  on  which  He  was  to  die — and 
seeing  this,  welcomed  the  Cross  with  all  its  pain 
— the  beginning  of  that  ministry  whereby  into 
His  own  triumphant  life  He  would  draw  the 
souls  of  men,  poor  of  life  as  they  might  be,  to 
13 


194 


CHRIST  SEEN  UNDER 


the  end  of  time.  The  very  Cross  would  speak 
to  men  of  the  life-giver  who  had  conquered  the 
Cross,  and  would  give  them  for  their  worship 
and  their  trust,  not  a  Christ  who  had  been  and 
passed  away,  but  a  Christ  who,  though  He  was 
dead,  was  alive  for  evermore. 

It  is  not  suggested  that  this  touches  more  than 
the  fringe  of  Calvary's  meaning,  or  that  Christ 
read  in  His  Cross  no  other  significance  than  that 
here  drawn  out.  But,  at  Christ's  side,  we  read 
these  things  at  least  with  Him  upon  the  mys- 
terious page  which  tells  how  He  was  to  drink 
death's  bitter  cup.  "  I,  if  I  be  lifted  up  from  the 
earth,  will  draw  all  men  unto  myself."  By  the 
Cross  He  was  going  to  win  that  power  which  He 
uses  still.  Of  all  others  who  in  the  service  of 
humanity  have  given  their  lives  one  can  say  that, 
had  they  been  permitted  to  keep  them,  their 
service  to  humanity  would  have  been  greater 
still :  of  Christ  one  has  to  say  that  just  because 
He  died  does  His  empire  grow  on  and  on 
towards  universality  among  men. 

But  this  thought  of  Christ's  had  a  divine  daring 


THE  SHADOW  OF  DEATH 


in  it.  Only  divineness  could  entertain  such  an 
expectation  as  this  of  His.  What  made  Christ 
so  humbly  submit  and  so  wondrously  rejoice 
in  that  whereto  He  submitted  ?  Is  there  any 
sufficient  explanation  but  this — that  this  was  the 
Son  of  God  ? 


XVL 


CHRIST  SEEN  AS  CONCEALING  AND 
REVEALING  HIMSELF:  THE  BE- 
GINNING  OF  THE  END. 

John  xiii. 

T  T  AVING  furnished  his  readers,  in  the  narra- 
^  ^  tive  of  the  two  preceding  chapters,  with 
two  fundamental  ideas  which  they  are  to  carry 
with  them  through  their  glance  over  the  closing 
scenes,  John  now  begins  his  account  of  the  closing 
scenes  themselves.  Christ  had  power  over  death, 
for  He  had  bidden  the  dead  Lazarus  live;  and 
His  death  was  therefore  no  martyrdom  in  the 
ordinary  sense,  no  fate  which  He  was  unable  to 
escape,  but  a  fate  voluntarily  embraced — that  is 
one  thing  to  be  remembered  as  the  story  goes 
on.  And  death  was  something  which  Christ 
took  as  an  actual  assistance  to  His  ministry,  not 


CHRIST  SEEN  AS  CONCEALING  HIMSELF  197 


as  a  hindrance  to  it,  for  by  means  of  it  He  would 
gather  power  to  draw  all  men  unto  Himself — ^ 
that  is  the  other.  Now  John  proceeds  to  show 
still  more  clearly  how  absolutely  out  of  the 
common  order  is  Christ's  bearing  of  Himself 
throughout,  how  in  all  He  did  and  in  all  He 
said  there  is  something  only  to  be  explained  by 
declaring  that  there  was  in  Him  a  life  entirely 
different  from  the  life  of  man.  Even  if  it  were 
possible  to  imagine  one  of  the  ordinary  family 
of  mankind  in  such  a  position  as  this  of  Christ's 
— with  a  death  before  him  which  might  be 
escaped,  with  a  death  before  him,  moreover, 
which  was  going  to  perfect  his  work — his  action 
and  his  speaking  would  be  of  a  different  order, 
directed  along  quite  different  lines,  from  the 
action  and  the  speaking  of  Christ.  These  chapters 
are  to  show  how  the  promptings  which  moved 
Christ  are  quite  other  than  the  promptings  by 
which,  if  one  could  picture  a  man  set  in  Christ's 
position  and  possessed  of  Christ's  power,  a  man 
would  be  moved.  This  present  chapter  shows  it 
in  regard  to  what  Christ  did,  as  the  following 
chapters  show  it  in  regard  to  what  Christ  said. 


198      CHRIST  SEEN  AS  CONCEALING 

He  humbles  Himself  before  His  most  intimate 
followers,  making  no  attempt  to  impress  even 
them  with  any  special  sense  of  the  power  He 
was  restraining  or  of  the  greatness  He  kept 
veiled.  The  greatest  of  men,  accepting  as  they 
may  whatever  may  be  involved  in  faithfulness  to 
their  call,  find  strength  in  communicating  the 
inmost  secrets  of  their  minds  to  those  who  are 
in  truth  their  friends.  Of  course  history  has 
many  instances  of  great  ones  who  have  preserved 
locked  within  their  own  breasts  thoughts  and 
feelings  which  could  not  have  been  understood 
had  they  uttered  them ;  and  there  have  been 
those  who,  because  any  telling  of  what  was  in 
them  would  have  been  a  vain  thing,  have  kept 
silence.  But  before  those  who  are  accessible  to 
impression,  man  opens  his  heart :  in  the  com- 
pany of  his  intimates,  who  are  willing  to  hear 
and  who  will  appreciate  whatever  seems  to  in- 
dicate his  greatness,  man's  lips  are  unsealed.  This 
Christ,  accepting  a  death  He  need  not  endure, 
keeping  restraint  upon  a  power  in  Him  by  whose 
exercise  He  might  be  delivered — what  will  He 
do  ?    Will  He  not  at  least  ensure  that  upon  the 


AND  REVEALING  HIMSELF  199 


minds  of  these  disciples,  gathered  with  Him  just 
before  the  end,  an  adequate  impression  shall  be 
left  of  the  greatness  with  which  He  might  have 
dazzled  the  world?  They  would  be  ready  to 
listen  to  Him  if  He  spoke  of  it,  would  gladly 
cherish  the  recollection  of  any  sign  of  it  He  might 
give — will  He  not  see  to  it  that  the  impression 
they  are  ready  to  receive  is  given  ?  They^  at 
least,  will  surely  be  made  to  know  how  wonderful 
their  Master  is  ? 

But  instead  of  greatening  Himself  in  their 
eyes,  the  Christ  brings  Himself  low,  and  washes 
His  disciples'  feet.  He  cares  nothing  about 
what  impression  His  followers  may  have  as  to 
His  power  to  resist  the  advancing  doom :  He 
cares  a  great  deal  more  about  the  spirit  that  may 
dwell  in  them  after  His  departure;  and  in  order 
that  the  spirit  dwelling  in  them  may  be  right.  He 
gives  them  this  example  that  they  should  do  as 
He  is  doing  to  them.  It  is  in  that  direction  that 
Christ's  thought  is  looking :  having  no  desire  that 
this  renunciation  of  power  He  is  making  in  letting 
death  conquer  Him  should  be  impressed  as  a 
wonderful  thing  upon  the  disciples*  minds,  He 


200      CHRIST  SEEN  AS  CONCEALING 


does  not  set  their  attention  upon  that :  among 
their  last  recollections  of  Him  there  is  to  stand 
out  the  recollection  of  Him  as  He  humbled  Him- 
self to  this,  so  showing  them  what  they  themselves 
should  be.  Quite  away  from  all  ordinary  human 
methods  is  Christ  lifted  in  this,  as  in  so  many 
other  things  we  have  seen  Him  to  be.  When 
man  would  have  striven  that  at  least  the  intimate 
ones  in  his  fellowship  should  appreciate  and  un- 
derstand, Christ  cares,  not  for  their  understanding 
of  Him,  but  for  their  continuance  in  a  right  spirit 
after  He  is  gone.  The  greatness  He  is  veiling  is 
a  secret  between  Himself  and  God — not  even  to 
these  friendly  eyes  is  it  to  be  displayed. 

But  was  the  Christ,  then,  wholly  removed  from 
what  man  would  have  felt  at  such  a  time?  If 
He  was,  His  very  distance  from  the  common 
plane  of  humanity  might  come  to  appear  too 
great.  The  sympathies  for  which  man  would 
have  yearned,  the  helpfulness  which  hearts  near 
by  can  render  to  a  heart  which  has  to  endure — 
was  all  this  nothing  to  Christ?  Nay,  for  "he 
was  troubled  in  the  spirit,  and  testified,  and  said, 


AND  REVEALING  HIMSELF  201 


Verily,  verily,  I  say  unto  you,  that  one  of  you 
shall  betray  me."  It  was  pain  to  Him,  and  a 
trouble  to  His  spirit,  that  among  His  followers 
should  be  one  so  base ;  and  His  sorrow  over  it 
He  does  not  hide.  Quite  away,  once  more,  from 
the  ordinary  methods  of  men.  What  man  would 
have  displayed — the  greatness  in  Him — Christ 
hides :  what  man  would  have  hidden — the  pain 
caused  by  the  unworthiness  of  one  of  the  band — 
Christ  displays.  Your  great  man  would  be  afraid 
that  such  a  reference  as  this  would  be  taken  as 
a  sign  of  weakness,  of  failing  heart,  of  relaxed 
will :  Christ  takes  the  risk,  and  lets  those  with 
Him  see  that  the  falling  away  of  one  makes  Him 
to  be  troubled  and  cast  down.  So  John  adds 
stroke  after  stroke  to  his  picture — shows  Christ 
hiding  what  man  would  have  revealed — then 
shows  Christ  revealing  what  man  would  have 
hidden — and  drives  one  thus  nearer  and  nearer 
to  the  conclusion  that  in  this  Christ  there  was  a 
life  at  work,  prompting  Him  to  this  incalculable 
unexpectedness  of  action,  which  must  have  been 
a  life  different  from  the  life  of  man.  He  had 
no  care  to  make  detailed   impression  of  His 


202      CHRIST  SEEN  AS  CONCEALING 


greatness  even  upon  His  most  intimate  ones: 
yet  their  sympathy  meant  something  to  Him ; 
and  when  the  sympathy  of  any  one  of  them  was 
withheld,  He  did  not  hide  His  grief. 

Yet,  to  complete  the  picture,  John  sets  in  one 
other  stroke.  Christ  might  be  troubled  in  spirit 
at  the  knowledge  of  the  treachery  with  which 
Judas  was  going  to  defile  his  soul ;  but  the 
trouble  meant  no  real  weakening  of  life  to  Him. 
For  at  the  moment  when  the  traitor  goes  forth 
to  do  his  treacherous  work,  Christ  rises  above  all 
emotion  of  trouble  and  regret,  and,  falling  back 
once  more  upon  the  promptings  of  the  life  within, 
declares  with  victorious  joy,  "  Now  is  the  Son  of 
man  glorified,  and  God  is  glorified  in  him."  So, 
although  Christ  was  glad  for  all  the  sympathy 
and  love  His  disciples  would  yield,  He  had 
elsewhere  a  suf?icient  store  of  strength:  He 
does  not  make  Himself  really  dependent  upon 
them,  even  though  He  will  receive  what  they 
give ;  and  in  the  depths  of  Him  there  is  that 
which  upholds  Him  and  imparts  this  ring  of 
triumph  to  His  tone  even  as  the  traitor  goes 


AND  REVEALING  HIMSELF 


out  to  betray  Him,  and  as  the  rest,  under  the 
mysteriousness  of  the  whole  thing,  are  dumb. 
It  is  not  dependence  upon  those  around,  for 
they  are  yielding  no  support :  it  is  not  stoicism, 
for  Christ  is  troubled  because  sympathy  and 
faithfulness  fail :  what  can  make  or  account  for 
the  joy,  then,  but  another  life  in  Him  fed  from 
divine  sources,  a  life  man  has  not  known  ?  Not 
like  man  in  what  He  hides — not  like  man  in 
what  He  reveals — not  like  man  in  the  joy  which 
rises  within  His  heart  at  the  very  moment  when 
man  could  do  no  more  than  endure,  if  indeed 
man  could  do  even  that — so,  point  by  point,  John 
intensifies  our  conviction  that  here  is  One  before 
us  who  is  not  of  us,  who  came  from  God. 

One  wonders  what  those  who  saw  the  Christ, 
as  He  moved  through  these  phases  of  His 
activity  before  them,  gathered  from  what  they 
saw.  As  to  the  most  of  it,  what  He  did  they 
knew  not  then.  We,  at  any  rate,  looking  back, 
can  get  but  one  impression — an  ever-deepening 
impression  of  greatness,  of  immeasurable  divine- 
ness,  of  the  presence  of  another  life,  only  to  be 


204  CHRIST  SEEN  AS  CONCEALING  HIMSELF 


called  the  life  of  God,  in  this  Christ  on  whom  we 
look.  And  for  the  establishing  of  our  faith  in 
Him,  there  is  something  to  be  gained  in  looking 
upon  Him  as  He  goes  through  these  last  scenes 
which,  had  He  been  less  than  divine,  would 
surely  have  shown  Him  to  be  so,  but  through 
which  He  passes  with  such  an  inspiration  of 
sacred  life  possessing  Him  as  no  other  has  ever 
known.  In  imagination,  set  the  noblest  man  into 
the  situation  of  Christ  as  the  end  drew  near, 
and  you  will  be  surer  than  ever  that  the  Christ 
is  born  out  of  diviner  forces  than  those  which 
make  the  common  family  of  man,  and  descends 
from  God. 


XVII. 


CHRIST  SEEN  IN  THE  UPPER 
ROOM. 

John  xiv.-xvii. 

/^^NE  of  the  chief  marvels  in  these  four 
marvellous  chapters — from  the  beginning 
of  the  fourteenth  to  the  close  of  the  seventeenth — 
is  that  throughout  the  stretch  of  them  Jesus  lays 
the  whole  stress  of  what  He  says  upon  His  dis- 
ciples rather  than  upon  Himself.  Of  the  four 
chapters,  the  first  three  record  Christ's  utter- 
ances to  His  companions  in  the  upper  room, 
while  the  fourth  contains  His  prayer  to  God ; 
but  everywhere  the  atmosphere  is  the  same. 
When  He  speaks,  His  speaking  is  concerned, 
not  with  any  consideration  as  to  how  what  He 
is  about  to  go  through  will  affect  Him,  but  with 

the  effect  it  will  have  upon  those  whom  He  has 
205 


2o6 


CHRIST  SEEN  IN 


loved  and  loves;  and  when  He  prays,  it  is  still 
with  them  and  with  their  concerns  that  His 
prayer  is  occupied.  It  is  to  cheer  them  that  He 
speaks :  it  is  that  they  may  be  cheered  and  kept 
that  He  prays. 

Every  verse  is  in  itself  a  jewel  that  scintillates 
with  light,  a  wonder  over  which  the  rapt  atten- 
tion cannot  help  being  detained ;  and  every 
separate  thing  that  Christ  said  has  left  to  the 
Christian  mind  a  legacy  of  rich  thought  and 
suggestion  inexhaustible  through  all  the  years. 
But  just  now,  in  this  rapid  survey  of  ours,  I 
want,  not  to  linger  over  any  particular  saying, 
but  to  notice  the  marvel  which  looks  forth 
through  all  the  sayings  alike ;  for  so  will  the 
purpose  of  securing  a  unified  impression  from 
the  entire  course  of  John's  Gospel  best  be  served. 
And  the  constant  marvel  here  is  that  Christ,  with 
the  Cross  so  close  upon  Him  that  its  shadow 
must  have  been  already  felt  upon  His  soul, 
devotes  Himself,  not  to  thinking  about  what 
will  mitigate  His  own  pain  or  gird  His  own 
strength,  but  to  the  comforting  of  those  from 
whose  sight  He  was  about  to  pass.    "  Let  not 


THE  UPPER  ROOM  207 

your  heart  be  troubled,"  so  His  communication 
to  the  disciples  begins :  "  these  things  1  have 
spoken  unto  you,  that  in  me  ye  may  have 
peace.  In  the  world  ye  have  tribulation :  but 
be  of  good  cheer ;  I  have  overcome  the  world," 
so  His  communication  to  the  disciples  ends. 
And  between  the  beginning  and  the  ending  the 
same  spirit  persists ;  and  throughout  the  prayer 
which  we  are  permitted  to  overhear  the  same 
spirit  is  revealed.  How  to  them  the  Comforter 
would  be  sent,  although  from  them  He  Himself 
in  His  visible  presence  would  be  withdrawn — 
how  they  would  not  be  left  desolate,  however 
things  might  seem — how  He  was  going  to  leave 
peace  with  them — how  they  might  have  whatever 
they  asked  in  His  name  —  how  their  sorrow 
would  be  turned  into  joy — with  what  a  long- 
drawn  list  of  promised  blessings  does  He  seek  to 
make  their  oppressed  hearts  grow  light  again ! 
How  does  the  picture  of  such  self-efifacement  as 
this  impress  you  ? — John  seems  to  enquire.  To 
us,  of  course,  there  is  no  surprise  in  it,  for  it 
is  what  we  should  expect  from  one  higher  and 
diviner  than  ourselves ;  but  for  John's  purpose — 


208 


CHRIST  SEEN  IN 


the  purpose  of  leading  his  readers  to  see  that 
here  is  one  higher  and  diviner  than  themselves — 
how  the  picture  would  tell,  as  stroke  by  stroke 
and  line  by  line  he  paints  it !  This  Christ,  set 
at  what  a  man,  great  as  he  might  be,  would 
have  looked  upon  as  the  crisis  of  his  fate,  when  he 
would  have  had  no  thought  to  spare  for  anything 
except  for  what  would  help  him  to  face  the  crisis 
unflinchingly  and  to  pass  through  it  unbelittled 
and  unashamed — this  Christ  devotes  Himself  to 
binding  up  His  disciples'  wounded  hearts !  What 
reserves  of  life — reserves  which  no  mere  human 
life  could  ever  have  accumulated — what  reserves 
of  life  there  must  have  been  in  Him  !  In  a  sense, 
Christ  took  His  impending  fate  to  be  more  His 
disciples'  concern  than  His  own :  He  appears  to 
watch  it  as  though  from  outside  and  to  note, 
not  what  it  brings  to  Him,  but  what  it  thrusts 
upon  them ;  and  while  others  would  have  been 
occupied  in  suppressing  the  natural  shudder  of 
apprehension  and  in  girding  themselves  up  to 
maintain  a  brave  front.  He  turns  quietly  to 
those  near  by,  with  the  word,  "  Let  not  your 
heart  be  troubled." 


THE  UPPER  ROOM 


It  IS  good  for  us  sometimes  thus  to  take 
into  account  the  general  bearing  of  the  Christ 
rather  than  His  detailed  actions  and  words,  for 
so  there  gathers  round  about  Him  a  greatness 
vaster  even  than  actions  or  words,  taken  alone, 
produce.  Wonderful  are  many  of  the  things  He 
did,  wonderful  many  of  the  things  He  said ; 
but  when,  passing  behind  the  actual  sayings 
and  doings,  we  get  a  grip  upon  the  spirit 
and  feeling  out  of  which  they  come,  there 
descends  upon  us  an  impression  of  divineness 
in  the  Christ  which  overmasters  all  re- 
sistance. It  may  be  said,  in  fact,  that  the 
supreme  proof  of  Christ's  divineness  lies  not  in 
anything  He  said  or  did,  or  in  any  logical 
inference  drawn  from  what  He  said  or  did :  one 
can  construct  reasoned  proofs,  of  course,  and 
they  have  their  worth ;  but  in  the  last  resort, 
it  is  the  atmosphere  which  hangs  round  about 
Him,  the  indefinable  spirit  behind  all  the  miracle 
and  all  the  preaching,  that  proclaim  themselves 
from  heaven.  One  feels  it  as  one  feels  the 
breath  of  changed  and  purer  air.  This  spirit, 
one  knows,  as  one  gazes  upon  it,  is  coming 
14 


2IO 


CHRIST  SEEN  IN 


down  to  earth,  not  being  produced  from  earth. 
In  regard  to  many  things  Christ  said,  imagine, 
if  you  can,  a  man  wise  enough  to  say  them — 
still  you  would  not  have  a  Christ;  or  in  regard 
to  many  things  Christ  did,  imagine,  if  you  can, 
a  man  strong  enough  to  do  them,  still  you 
would  not  have  a  Christ :  there  is  something 
more,  something  behind,  in  the  general  con- 
stitution of  the  life  and  being,  which  separates 
Him  from  all.  And  these  chapters  show  a 
fresh  instance  in  point.  This  absence  from  the 
Christ  of  any  interest — for  so  it  may  be  phrased 
— in  what  lay  before  Him,  this  detachment  of 
His  from  any  care  about  it  for  His  own  sake, 
this  concentration  of  Himself  upon  others  through 
the  hours  of  crisis,  which  marks  His  whole  bear- 
ing— one  realises  that  it  is  all  flung  out  from 
behind  the  gates  of  heaven.  Earth  never  made 
it :  no  forces  at  work  in  human  nature  are 
sufficient  for  this :  to  this  marvel  of  tempera- 
ment (though  the  term  is  of  course  inadequate) 
nothing  else  than  divineness  can  have  given  birth 

For  the  substance  and  burden  of  the  message 


THE  UPPER  ROOM 


211 


with  which  Christ  sought  to  console  His  dis- 
ciples for  His  impending  departure  from  their 
side,  it  is  a  reaffirmation  of  His  assurance  that 
death  was  not  the  end,  but  the  beginning,  of 
His  perfect  ministry.  Spite  of  the  appearance 
of  departure,  He  will  be  with  His  own  still — 
not  as  a  memory,  not  as  one  who  has  paid  a 
visit  to  their  lives  and  communicated  a  new 
impulse  to  them  thereby — but  He  will  be  with 
them  as  a  living  presence,  still  able  to  do  for 
them  all  that  He  has  been  doing  and  more 
than  He  has  been  doing,  able  to  repeat  and 
to  enlarge  all  His  ministries  to  them,  even 
although  the  channels  of  their  coming  should 
be  changed.  He  would  not  leave  them  deso- 
late, but  would  come  unto  them.  He,  with 
the  Father,  would  make  His  abode  with  them. 
He  was  the  vine  and  they  were  the  branches, 
and  they  were  to  abide  in  Him.  The  world 
might  behold  Him  no  more,  but  they  would 
behold  Him,  and  because  He  lived  they  should 
live  also  He  would  see  them  again,  and  their 
heart  should  rejoice,  and  their  joy  no  one 
should    take   from  them.    And  so,  in  various 


212 


CHRIST  SEEN  IN 


ways,  through  many  forms  of  speech,  Christ 
seeks  to  bring  His  disciples  to  an  apprehension 
of  the  truth  that,  after  He  was  gone,  no  less 
than  while  He  was  in  bodily  presence  near 
them.  He  would  be  to  them  the  very  source 
of  life.  As  He  had  on  previous  occasions 
declared  Himself,  to  those  who  could  not  or 
would  not  understand,  to  be  life's  bread,  life's 
light,  the  living  water — possessing  the  source 
of  life  in  Himself — so  now  He  impresses  upon 
the  disciples,  longing  that  they  may  understand, 
that  independent  of  physical  presence  or  absence. 
He  will  have  in  Himself  for  them  life's  inex- 
haustible supply.  And  understanding  and  re- 
membering that,  they  would  leap  past  the 
Cross  with  all  its  sadness,  knowing,  as  Christ 
knew,  that  it  was  not  the  close  of  a  ministry, 
but  the  beginning  of  a  ministry  that  should 
endure;  and  their  hearts  would  be  troubled 
no  more. 

The  secret  of  a  strong  Christian  life  is  to 
be  learnt  in  that  upper  room;  for  its  secret  is 
the  conviction  that  Christ  is  still  what  He  ever 
was.     He    did   not    merely  make    history,  as 


THE  UPPER  ROOM 


213 


other  great  ones  have  made  history:  He  did  not 
inaugurate  a  new  era,  and  then  leave,  to  work 
themselves  out,  the  new  forces  He  brought  into 
play.    If  He  only  did  that,  our  hearts  might 
be  troubled  indeed    at    the  thought  that  His 
footsteps  tread  our  earth  no  more.    The  very 
greatness  of  the  ideals  He  uplifted  before  us, 
the  very  fact  that  no  other  can  compare  with 
Him,  would  but  make  the  present  desolation  a 
desolation  indeed  if  He  only  came  and  went 
away.    And  when  so  much  modern  thinking  is 
devoted  to  a  reconstruction  of  the  earthly  life 
of  Christ,  when  so  many  lights  are  flashed  upon 
it  that  it  starts  out  into  dazzling  clearness,  a 
work  is  done  for  us  whereof  we  may  indeed 
be  glad,  but  a  work  with  whose  doing  we  may 
not  rest  content.    The  greatness  of  what  was 
is  only  an  oppression  unless  we  are  alive  to 
the  greatness  of  what  is  now.    It  was  to  what 
was    coming    after    that    Christ's    earthly  life 
looked  on :  it  is  on  what  is  come  after  that 
our  gaze  must  be  fixed.    Now  He  is  what  He 
was  and  more  than  He  was :  now  we  are  to 
abide,  not  in  the  memory  of  Him,  but  in  Him: 


214    CHRIST  SEEN  IN  THE  UPPER  ROOM 


He  did  not  simply  come  and  go  and  leave  a 
fragrance  upon  our  earth,  but  He  makes  His 
abode  with  us  ;  and,  commonplace  as  all  these 
things  are,  it  is  as  we  remember  them  and  re- 
impress  them  upon  our  hearts  and  appreciate 
the  vivid  reality  of  them  that  our  discipleship 
is  delivered  from  aught  of  sadness  and  strain 
and  becomes  a  buoyant  thing.  For  our  con- 
solation, as  for  the  consolation  of  those  who 
companied  with  Him  in  the  upper  room,  Christ 
tells  us  that,  though  our  eyes  see  Him  not, 
yet  He  is  coming  now  to  receive  us  unto  Him- 
self, that  desolate  He  does  not  leave  us,  that 
now  and  to  the  end  He  is  for  us  the  living 
source  of  life.  And  so  we  need  not  let  our 
hearts  be  troubled,  since  from  us  no  one  can 
take  the  living  Christ  who  is  Himself  our  joy. 


XVIII. 


CHRIST  SEEN  AT  THE  END  AND 
AT  THE  NEW  BEGINNING. 


HROUGH    the    chapters  with  which  his 


Gospel  closes  John  has  only  to  indicate 
how  right  up  to  the  end  Christ  remains  what 
all  the  preceding  narrative  has  shown  Him  to 
be,  so  that  the  whole  account  may  reach  its 
termination  without  revealing  any  trace  of  in- 
consistency in  His  bearing  or  His  words.  The 
last  tests — whether  it  be  the  test  of  apparent 
failure  under  the  suffering  of  the  Cross,  or  the 
test  of  triumph  when  resurrection  had  come — 
the  last  tests  are  endured  by  Christ  without 
any  impairing  of  the  impression  He  gives  as 
living  from  other  sources  than  those  whence 
man's  life  is    drawn.    The   picture  forms  one 


John  xviii.-xxi. 


2i6        CHRIST  SEEN  AT  THE  END 


harmonious  whole :  we  may  go  to  the  account 
of  this  life  and  death,  and  if,  impressed  by  the 
wonder  of  the  life  and  death,  we  ask  what  the 
explanation  can  be,  the  only  adequate  reply  is 
that  this  Christ  is  from  above;  or  we  may 
begin,  as  it  were,  at  the  other  end  and  may 
enquire  whether,  on  the  supposition  that  this 
Christ  is  from  above,  there  is  in  the  account 
any  single  thing  which  does  not  fit  in  with 
the  theory  we  bring — only  to  find  that  there 
is  not  one.  It  is  not  merely  that  on  the 
whole,  taking  everything  into  consideration,  Christ 
was  probably  divine.  Who  can  it  be  that  has 
said  these  things  and  done  these  things  and 
been  these  things?  The  Son  of  God.  And 
if  the  Son  of  God  did  come  to  earth — if  such 
a  coming  could  be — what  would  the  Son  of 
God  naturally  say  and  do  and  be?  Just 
these  things.  There  are  many  great  things  in 
this  life  which  can  only  be  explained  by 
saying  that  this  is  the  Son  of  God ;  and 
there  is  nothing  in  this  life  which  is  not  great 
enough  to  be  so  explained.  The  saying  that 
Christ  was  from  above  covers  all  the  life:  the 


AND  AT  THE  NEW  BEGINNING  217 


life  was  always  up  to  the  demands  of  the 
saying.  And  John  completes  his  story  in 
order  that  his  readers  may  see  how  this  is 
so.  The  end  matches  the  beginning.  The 
last  scenes  fit  perfectly  upon  those  that  have 
gone  before. 

Through  the  whole  tragedy  of  the  Crucifixion 
something  shows  itself  in  this  Sufferer  which 
marks  Him  out  from  all  other  sufferers  of  whom 
history  tells.  One  has  but  to  ask  oneself  a 
single  question  in  order  to  see  the  truth  of 
the  statement.  What  is  the  emotion  stirred  in 
the  human  soul  as  detail  is  piled  on  detail 
while  the  story  of  the  Passion  passes  on  ?  Can 
we  pity  Christ?  That  is  the  emotion  we  should 
feel  were  it  anybody  else's  fate  of  which  we 
read ;  but  pity,  in  the  ordinary  sense,  has  no 
place  here.  Any  pity  of  ours  appears  almost 
an  impertinence  when  offered  to  this  Sufferer. 
Not  that  to  Christ  pain  was  any  less  real 
than  to  others — not  that  to  Him,  through  His 
divineness,  one  touch  was  spared  of  the  bitter- 
ness such  a  death  as  that    must   have  held; 


2i8        CHRIST  SEEN  AT  THE  END 


but  it  is  awe,  not  pity,  that  moves  us  as  we 
behold  Him  drinking  the  cup  of  bitterness  to 
its  last  drop :  He  is  not  open  to  sympathy  of 
ours,  we  instinctively  feel :  our  hearts  are  over- 
whelmed before  this  Cross  because  it  is  so 
holy,  not  because  it  is  so  sad.  One  dares  not 
pity  Christ.  Something  dwells  in  Him,  looking 
forth  upon  us,  which  even  in  those  awful 
hours,  when  in  one  sense  He  comes  nearest 
to  our  suffering  humanity,  takes  Him  right  away 
from  ordinary  suffering  humanity  again  —  no 
open  -  minded  reader  can  go  through  John's 
chapters  without  being  conscious  of  the  fact. 
Here  at  the  life's  close  is  the  same  quality 
which  all  the  life's  progress  has  shown — that 
remoteness,  that  severance,  from  man's  common 
plane.  And  (if  we  may  venture  upon  the 
question)  did  we  ask.  How  would  a  Son  of 
God  take  a  death  inflicted  upon  Him  by  the 
hands  of  men? — we  should  have  to  answer.  He 
would  have  taken  it  thus.  The  whole  thing 
fits  in. 

Then  John  passes  to  the  resurrection.    "  The 


AND  AT  THE  NEW  BEGINNING  219 


light  shineth  in  the  darkness ;  and  the  darkness 
overcame  it  not " — so  he  had  said  at  the  Gospel's 
beginning.  Now  he  has  to  tell  how,  notwith- 
standing the  temporary  overclouding,  the  light 
emerged  in  brilliance  again.  And  still  the  whole 
thing  fits  in.  This  Christ  whose  whole  life  had 
been  a  revelation  of  heavenly  life,  ought,  if  all  He 
said  about  Himself  was  true  and  if  those  who 
received  impressions  of  something  heavenly  from 
Him  were  not  deluded,  to  find  nothing  in  death 
He  cannot  overcome.  The  divine  life  that  held 
Him — if  it  did  really  hold  Him — ought  to  be 
able  to  hold  Him  still,  whatever  man  might  do. 
There  is  nothing  miraculous  about  the  resurrec- 
tion for  those  who  have  set  themselves  under  the 
impression  of  the  life  that  went  before :  it  is  what 
one  would  expect,  if  it  had  really  been  given  to 
Christ,  as  He  declared  it  to  have  been  given  to 
Him  and  as  one  cannot  help  believing  it  to  have 
been  given  to  Him — if  it  had  really  been  given  to 
Christ  to  have  life  in  Himself:  the  miracle  would 
have  been  for  a  resurrection  not  to  come.  And 
yet  it  is  to  be  noticed  that,  although  the  resurrec- 
tion was  His  vindication,  Jesus  did  not  use  it  so 


220        CHRIST  SEEN  AT  THE  END 


in  face  of  an  unbelieving  world :  it  was  to  His 
disciples  that  He  showed  Himself,  not  to  those 
who  during  His  life  had  scorned  Him ;  and  He 
would  not  now,  any  more  than  He  would  before, 
employ  the  power  of  the  divine  life  in  Him 
merely  to  provoke  wonder  or  to  excite  an  ad- 
miration that  had  no  moral  quality  or  value. 
Again,  the  whole  thing  fits  in.  The  picture 
makes  an  unbroken  harmony  throughout.  It  is 
thus,  we  are  moved  to  declare,  that  the  Son 
of  God  would  have  borne  Himself  It  is  thus 
that  a  divine  life  would  have  manifested  its 
divineness. 

With  the  resurrection  and  the  self-manifesta- 
tion of  Christ  to  His  disciples  John  had  intended, 
probably,  to  bring  his  Gospel  to  a  close.  At 
any  rate  the  verses  at  the  end  of  the  twentieth 
chapter  read  like  last  words.  But  then,  as  if 
suddenly  recollecting  something,  John  adds  the 
chapter  which  follows.  I  fancy  that  as  his 
mind  travelled  back  from  the  end  of  his  task 
to  the  scenes  he  had  recorded  at  the  beginning, 
John  remembered  how,  at  Peter's  calling,  Jesus 


AND  AT  THE  NEW  BEGINNING  221 


had  told  him  that  he  should  be  called  Cephas — 
a  rock  or  stone,  indicating  that  his  nature  should 
be  transformed  from  its  instability  and  unruled 
impulse  to  rock-like  firmness  and  strength.  And 
the  last  thing  John  has  had  to  record  about 
Peter  has  been  the  fact  that  he  denied  his  Lord. 
Was  Christ's  promise  then  to  come  to  nought? 
Not  so.  And  to  show  how  Jesus  still  meant  this 
impulsive  Peter  to  be  transformed,  John  records 
the  tender  scene  in  which  Christ,  without  reproach 
or  hardness,  recommences  His  spiritual  training 
of  the  disciple  who  had  failed,  draws  from  him  his 
avowal — "  Lord,  thou  knowest  that  I  love  thee  " 
— and  bids  him  feed  His  sheep.  Still  it  fits  in. 
The  Christ  who  at  the  beginning  was  conscious 
of  the  power  to  transform  character  and  make 
a  man  the  exact  contrary  of  what  he  was 
before,  is  at  the  end  conscious  of  it  still, 
and  actually  begins  the  transforming  work 
when  Peter  must  have  felt  himself  almost 
beyond  any  redeeming  power  at  all.  Just  what 
the  Son  of  God  would  do — our  hearts  dare 
humbly  to  voice  their  assent.  The  wholeness  of 
the  picture  is  made  more  vivid  to  us  still  by  the 


222        CHRIST  SEEN  AT  THE  END 


chapter  which  John  adds  after  he  had  thought 
his  task  was  done. 

So  the  profoundest  book  in  all  the  world 
reaches  its  climax  and  its  close.  This  is  the 
book  which  speaks  of  Life — of  man's  need  of  it, 
of  the  gift  of  it  in  Jesus  Christ.  There  is  no 
book  in  the  Bible — and  of  course,  therefore,  no 
book  in  all  the  libraries  of  earth — that  can  so 
give  us  a  fused  impression  of  strong,  beating, 
palpitating  life  as  this  Fourth  Gospel,  which  we 
have  rapidly  scanned,  and  no  book  that  can  so 
make  us  realise  that  life,  life  in  its  fullest  sense, 
may  be  ours.  And  life  is  in  truth  our  need.  To 
have  had  a  great  example  is  something,  but  not 
all.  To  have  had  even  a  Saviour  who,  by  some- 
thing He  did  outside  us,  made  possible  to  us  a 
passage  to  heaven,  is  not  enough  for  those  whose 
souls  are  really  wakened.  It  is  life  we  need. 
We  feel,  when  the  slumbering  instincts  are  roused, 
and  the  commonplace  quietude  which  broods 
generally  over  our  inner  being  is  broken  up — we 
feel  then  as  if  the  life  within  us  were  flowing, 
a  poor,  thin,  trickling  stream,  between  its  banks, 


AND  AT  THE  NEW  BEGINNING  223 


instead  of  rushing  on  like  a  rich,  flooding  torrent 
that  gathers  strength  and  volume  as  it  goes : 
looking  round  the  length  and  breadth  and  height 
of  our  natures,  we  see  vast  empty  spaces,  silent 
and  desolate,  waiting  for  a  movement  and  a 
beauty  that  have  not  come ;  or,  to  change  the 
figure,  our  souls  are  like  a  great  house  with  half 
its  rooms  unfurnished,  striking  consciousness  of 
poverty  and  helplessness  upon  us  as  we  see  how 
bare  they  are.  Existence,  of  course,  is  always 
ours,  but  life,  in  any  large  and  rounded  sense  of 
the  word,  is  not.  We  only  pant  along  our  way, 
instead  of  drawing  full,  deep  breaths.  We  want 
life.  What  we  want  is  some  ministry  which  will 
change  our  lives  within  us  to  divine  fulness, 
which  will  work,  not  only  for  us,  but  in  us,  which 
will  convert  the  merely  human  in  us  into  some- 
thing that  is  of  God.  We  want  divine  life  to 
overflow  us  as  the  sea-tides  overflow  the  bare 
sands  which  at  the  ebb  lie  waiting  for  the  tides 
to  come.  And  in  the  Christ  as  John  shows  Him 
the  life-tide  of  God  begins  its  flow  upon  our  bare 
and  desolate  hearts.  Let  us  take  that  impression 
of  Christ  from  our  study  of  His  deep  conscious- 


224   CHRIST  AT  END  AND  NEW  BEGINNING 


ness  in  this  book — realise  how,  when  our  voices 
make  their  pleading — 

'Tis  life,  whereof  our  nerves  are  scant, 
Oh  Ufe,  not  death,  for  which  we  pant; 
More  Ufe,  and  fuller,  that  I  want 

— this  Christ  has  life  indeed,  and  in  His  power  of 
self-communication  to  us  can  make  us  to  have 
life  and  to  have  it  abundantly.  And  through 
these  things  that  once  were  written  by  the 
evangelist  of  vanished  centuries  may  something  of 
their  intended  work  be  wrought  in  us  who  read 
the  phrases  formed  by  his  dead  hand  —  we 
believing  with  more  complete  assurance  that 
Jesus  is  the  Christ,  the  Son  of  God,  and,  as  we 
believe,  finding  life  in  His  name. 


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